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WHAT MAY WE READ? 



WHAT 
MAY WE READ? 

A CONVERSATION STORY 

BY 
CHARLES WALDSTEIN 



NEW YORK 
191 1 



I'm 



Copyright, 1911 
By CHARLES WALDSTEIN 

Entered at Stationers'' Hall 



Printed in the United States 



©CI.A30329i 



To THE Memory 

OF Two Great Friends 

Henry Sidgwick and Charles Dudley Warner 

THIS little book IS 

dedicated 



Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen 
Mach ich die kleinen Lieder 

Heine 



PREFACE 

This conversation-story was written some 
years ago (in 1892) and has been in my desk 
ever since. It is one of a series of short stories, 
half story and half essay, originally called by me 
the "Ethics of the Surface Series." I advisedly 
meant to present to the reading public a modern 
form of literary work, not unknown since the 
days of Plato, but still uncommon. It aimed at 
combining the modern form of fiction with the 
older forms of the dialogue, and to reproduce the 
actual conditions of life among thoughtful people 
of our own day. 

The central point of interest to the composition 
as a work of literary art is always furnished by 
some social or ethical question. Such questions are 
usually dealt with in the form of essays, without 
any personal or dramatic setting. But I deliber- 
ately maintain that, from the point of view of lit- 
erary art itself, the introduction of such personal 
and dramatic setting is justified. On the one hand, 
intellectual topics of this nature and the princi- 
ples of social life can form, and ought to form, 
the subject of purely literary treatment in any 
7 



PREFACE 

department of literature which deals with human 
life. They are as vital an element in our con- 
scious existence as are any of the other aspects 
of life which have hitherto been the standard sub- 
jects of fiction. On the other hand, I maintain 
with equal strength of conviction, that the prin- 
ciples of social ethics, especially the "surface 
ethics" of life and the problems therein involved, 
can only gain by being thus presented in their 
vital personal and dramatic setting. 

Prime nature with an added artistry — 
No carat lost, and yon have gained a ring. 

Truth has gained from the life of artistic pres- 
entation, and art has lost none of its vitality from 
yielding its light in the quest of truth. 

Each one of these "stories" was to treat some 
topic or problem of social ethics round which the 
composition was to group itself; or rather, each 
question or problem of social ethics was to per- 
meate the personalities of the story, and to receive 
from this vitalization added life and interest. The 
general problem was thus made real and individ- 
ual, and the personalities, their thoughts and ac- 
tions, made the more human from reflecting the 
issues which move society at large. The highest 
aim which I set myself, was to weld both these 
8 



PREFACE 

elements, supposed to be discordant, into an har- 
monious whole. 

I may have failed in realizing this literary idea. 
These conversation-stories may not present a 
complete artistic fusion of the two elements of 
which they are composed. If so, the work must be 
criticised on that ground. But I insist with all 
emphasis, that the offhand and commonplace criti- 
cism which at once condemns such an effort be- 
cause there is supposed to exist an a priori incom- 
patibility between thought and life, truth and 
beauty in art, is unfounded when we consider some 
of the greatest of literary works in the past, and 
quite unjustified when prescribing the possible 
lines for new literary efforts in the future. In 
fairness to the effort I have here made, I must 
humbly ask that this work be not judged sum- 
marily, by reiterating the old critical saw concern- 
ing the "novel with a purpose" or the introduc- 
tion of any ulterior purpose into a work of art. 
Such a fusion is here consciously attempted ; and 
if I have failed, it is because of defective execu- 
tion and bad workmanship, and not because the 
form itself is inadmissible in literature. 

The present conversation-story really deals 
with two such problems of life, logically, and I 
hope organically, interwoven with each other in 

9 



PREFACE 

the education and development of the central per- 
sonality in the story. The one is the question, 
whether it is good for us to read everything; the 
other is concerned vi^ith the wider and more subtle 
problem of family life, as to the just balance and 
proportion of duty toward those with whom we 
are intimately associated in the family, and our 
duty, or our right, to follow out the development 
of our own individual life irrespective of our re- 
lationship to those immediately about us or de- 
pendent upon us. This latter problem has in re- 
cent days been more than once made the central 
topic in works of fiction. 

These two problems are supposed to have played 
an essential part in the thought and the life of the 
personalities presented. I hold that they are thus 
essential elements in the lives of these people, be- 
cause they had been so consciously prominent in 
their thoughts. These thoughts are exchanged be- 
tween the characters in the story in conversations 
which educated people of that kind are always 
likely to hold. And the exchange of these 
thoughts forms a most important dramatic element 
— as important as any actions in life — in the de- 
velopment of their existence. I am firmly con- 
vinced that this is true of the lives of thoughtful 
people in modern times, even of the simpler lives 

10 



PREFACE 

of those whose education and occupation are sup- 
posed to disfavour reflection and thoughtful con- 
versation. And I must repeat that, if this is true, 
the presentation of such thoughts and of such con- 
versations is as vital a part of actual life as are the 
interests, feelings and passions grouped round the 
sexual relations of men and women, which form 
the chief topic of modern fiction. 

The Author. 
Newton Hall, 
Newton, 

Cambridge. 

Jan. 8, 191 1. 



II 



WHAT MAY WE READ ? 
BOOK I 



CHAPTER I 

IT was in the summer of 1892 on the White Star 
Steam packet Majestic, one of the finest 
specimens of naval architecture then saiHng the 
high seas. 

The ship had Hngered for some time awaiting 
the mail in Queenstown harbour. The town and 
its hills were smiling a cheery God-speed at them 
in the sunlight, with a hospitable Irish twinkle, 
which seemed to say: "Sorry to lose you; come 
back soon and we'll have a joke and a laugh to- 
gether," Then there was busy running to and fro 
along the gangway; sailors carrying huge mail- 
bags on their bent backs. — "What do all those 
people find to write about ? What mass of tragedy 
and comedy, of tenderness, hatred and greed may 
those thousands of letters contain?" — The huge 
bags were piled up even on the paddle-box and 
were weighing down the tender. When these had 

13 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

been stowed away, there was the sharp tinkle of a 
bell, a few short orders, a slight crunching noise, 
a business-like greeting between the officers, and 
the huge hull, freed from its obtrusive little para- 
site which sheered off, steamed slowly out into 
the open sea, leaving the fair shores of the green 
island on its lee. 

It was a heavenly August afternoon. The sea, 
like a sheet of glass, was twinkling in the sun- 
shine, the light breeze was probably only awak- 
ened by the speed of the steamer forging rapidly 
ahead. 

There were not many passengers on board, so 
there was ample room for all on deck. Some were 
walking about restlessly, looking back in their 
thoughts or ahead, engrossed in their own inner 
moods; some were chatting together in groups, 
or were pointing to the shore, where they identified 
the various bays and towns. There were families, 
old friends, newly made acquaintances; scenes of 
recognition, more or less demonstrative, were in- 
terrupting or enlivening the continuous swaying 
to and fro of the stream of promenaders; some 
were eagerly looking at all the other passengers, 
spying for acquaintances, or anxious to make new 
ones as soon as possible ; while others were stroll- 
ing listlessly or demurely, with blank expressions 

14 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

on their faces, determined to manifest no special 
interest in the others and no anxiety, or even de- 
sire, to increase the number of their acquaint- 
ances. But most were comfortably seated in their 
steamer chairs and were either looking over the 
sea dreamily or watching the receding shore. 
Others were reading. 

Among those thus seated was a young lady, 
Ruth Ward of Boston, and a youngish man 
of about thirty, George L. Van Zant of New 
York. They did not know each other. Their 
chairs nearly joined, hers somewhat sheltered 
behind the projection of a deck-cabin, his fur- 
ther forward and obliquely to hers, so that she 
could observe him, while he had to turn slightly to 
the right to see her. 

The girl had every now and then cast an 
interested glance at the man, who was reading 
what was evidently a French novel. Its yellow 
paper cover alone stamped it as the production of 
one of the firms, Calmann-Levy, Charpentier, 
Firmin Didot or some such Paris publisher. 

It was not only the intentness with which he 
read the book that attracted her attention and 
aroused her curiosity; for he was not an over- 
demonstrative reader. On the contrary, his knit 
brow remained unchanged as he followed the story 

IS 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

he was reading and there was a look of disgust, 
rather than one of fascinated interest, in his face. 
But her curiosity was further stimulated by the 
fact that she could not succeed in reading the title 
of the book. She wondered whether it was inten- 
tional that, from the moment he appeared with the 
book under his arm, she had not been able to get 
a good look at the title page. For when he came 
walking up to his chair with the book under his 
arm, the title-page was pressed to his side, while 
the back with the announcement of other books in 
smaller type, illegible from where she sat, was the 
only part of the book he presented to view. Even 
when it lay on his lap, after he had sat down, the 
back was uppermost, and the moment he began 
to read, after finishing the first page, he at once 
turned the page with the title round the back, con- 
tinuing carefully to hold the book, not spread 
open, but as if it was a single page. 

Was this an intentional act of concealment on 
his part, or was it quite accidental ? She could not 
make this out. Nor could the young man reading 
have answered her. Perhaps a desire to hide the 
title was latent and emanated from an instinctive 
or half-conscious impulse. 

With a feeling of impatience and disappoint- 
ment she had given up her attempt to read the 

i6 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

title, and resolved to cast the stupid matter out of 
her mind, as, after all, quite unimportant, and she 
began to look over the sea with her fresh young 
face bent forward, dreaming. But a somewhat 
saddened and yet eager look that came into her 
eyes as she gazed, a slight twitching about the 
mouth, a touch of drawnness about the cheek 
counteracted the first impression of freshness ; and 
the eagerness of the eyes disturbed the repose. 
They were sunk too deeply to convey peace and 
calm happiness or serenity, though their lightness 
was thereby warmed to a more spiritual glow. 

Her thoughts or dreams were not continuous 
as she gazed over the sea ; for now and again she 
would direct her attention to one of the prome- 
naders or would examine some object on the deck ; 
while her fingers would intertwine in restless play, 
though she sat quite still; and then she would 
fold her hands quietly in her lap again. Most 
frequently she would turn and examine the man 
reading, almost against her will. 

She evidently tried not to look towards him and 
her glances in his direction became more and more 
infrequent, when suddenly her attention was fixed 
on him by a change in the hitherto immovable 
countenance. Had she not before familiarised her- 
self with the face and its expression, the change 

17 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

would hardly have been noticed ; but she now saw 
how the knit brow contracted into a decided 
frown, how the lips were tightly pressed together, 
the corners of the mouth drawn down in a mani- 
fest burst of indignation and disgust. 

With a sudden thrust or jerk of his whole 
body he rose to his feet from his reclining posi- 
tion and stood erect. There was something violent 
in this movement which might have been accom- 
panied by some expletive. But this sudden out- 
burst was at once checked. He paused, then 
walked slowly to the rails, and calmly threw the 
book into the sea. He did not stop to watch it ; but 
with composed face he turned round, took his 
cigarette-case from his pocket, lit a cigarette and 
strolled quietly away. 

For one moment his eye had caught those of the 
girl watching him with fixed intentness, and 
his colour seemed to rise. He was evidently dis- 
pleased with being watched and, still more, with 
having ostentatiously given way to a rapid im- 
pulse in the sight of strangers. 

"Just what I should have expected of him," she 
muttered to herself between her teeth, as she 
looked after his receding form. "Bourgeois! 
Financier! — a bad mixture!" 



i8 



CHAPTER II 

RUTH had noticed George Van Zant with 
artistic interest the moment she had left Lon- 
don for Liverpool. They had travelled together in 
the same carriage on the London and North- 
western Railway. She had liked his face; but, 
above all, it had fascinated her as an artist. It 
was clean-shaven, with finely cut features, some- 
what sallowed and worn, perhaps hardened by a 
passionate life. The firm mouth had a remote sug- 
gestion of sensuality in the fuller lower lip with 
its softer curves; but this was at once dispelled 
by the more decided lines of the thinner upper lip, 
accentuated in its outline by the light-coloured 
border between the red of the lip and the dark 
grey-blue where the moustache had been shaven. 
With people who shave constantly this peculiar ac- 
centuation in the outline of the upper lip often 
lends an exaggerated impression of hardness to 
the mouth. She then noticed the strong, slightly 
protruding, though not pointed chin, and the flat 
jaws and cheeks, all too angular to suit the "class- 
icists," but pleasing to her in their simple massive- 
ness. A few strokes of the brush would fix their 

19 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

character on the canvas. But the eyes, of an unde- 
fined colour, sunk deep beneath the brow, pre- 
sented delightful masses of light and shade, and 
lent to the face a dreamy, nay, a soft expression, 
which contrasted markedly with the decision sug- 
gested by mouth and chin. The feature which in- 
terested her least was the nose. It was too "class- 
ical," too exasperatingly "perfect" ; and "perfec- 
tion" always suggested want of character to her. 
It was rather long than short, thin than thick, 
though the upper part of the bridge was broad, 
the sides rather flat and straight as they joined 
the cheeks. The nostrils were delicately curved 
and suited the work of a gem engraver rather than 
that of a painter. "Too much line-work, not 
enough planes and masses for colour and brush," 
she thought, as she turned from examining the 
face, fearing that he might have noticed her stare. 

She had studied it all as an artist and imagined 
herself drawing the face. She longed to have him 
before her easel. "It would be difficult not to 
make the face and its expression too hard or else 
to lose all character" — she summarised her sub- 
jective criticism as a painter. 

She was further puzzled in determining his na- 
tionality and what might be his occupation. 

When he entered the railway carriage his dress 

20 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and bearing made her think him an EngHshman ; 
but the way he instinctively raised his hat indefi- 
nitely to all the occupants led her to put him down 
as a Frenchman. On the whole, though, the gen- 
eral cast of the face, with mouth, chin and jaw, 
marked a type with which she was familiar in 
some severe American statesmen, a refined Yankee 
type. But she always remembered it in old men 
with grey hair. If only he would take off his hat 
so that she could see the top of his head ! She was 
sure the hair was strikingly thick and smooth. 
Yet this was a young man. 

Was he a man of affairs or profession ? No. He 
did not fit into any one of their categories as 
known to her, and a suggestion in him from the 
one was at once contradicted by something in his 
dress, manner or bearing, belonging to the other. 
An artist ? Perhaps. But for this he appeared too 
calm; nor had the sedate elegance of his dress, 
with a touch of the sportsman about it, anything 
of the originality which always shows itself some- 
where in an artist's clothes. He was probably an 
ordinary man of leisure. A gentleman, a man of 
refinement, he certainly was. 

He had helped her with her hand-luggage as 
they left the train for the hotel ; and she had then 
lost sight of him until the disagreeable moment 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

when she found herself packed together with a 
couple of hundred other travellers on the tender 
which was to take them to the Majestic. 

While all the passengers were suffering from 
the inconvenience of being hustled, hand-luggage 
and all, in the insufficient space allotted to them 
on one small tender, and were grumblingly wait- 
ing in irritated disgust till the huge mass of larger 
luggage was transported from the dock to their 
boat, an empty tender of the same build and di- 
mensions was lying along side with several large 
trunks and boxes and some elegant hand-bags on 
its deck — an insignificant mass compared to the 
bulk which was continually increasing on their 
own. Presently aboard this boat there came in cool 
leisureliness, chatting pleasantly with one another, 
a group of six or seven people : two older couples, 
a smart young woman or two, and the travelling 
companion whose face had interested her so much 
on the way from Lx)ndon. 

When this party, cool and unruffled, smiling 
and laughing, and looking down in com- 
passionate wonder at the mass of perspiring 
and grumbling travellers packed like sheep on the 
boat beside them, had settled themselves on the 
quarter-deck, the captain gave his signal, and off 
they steamed calmly towards the Majestic, leav- 

22 



WHAT MAY WE READ> 

ing the other tender with Its load to wait for an- 
other half hour until the stray "sheep" and the 
stray luggage had all been collected. They would, 
no doubt, arrive on board the Majestic long be- 
fore the others, would have the whole ship and all 
the stewards to themselves, would be comfortably 
and quietly settled in their cabins, with their 
steamer-luggage unpacked, before the rushing 
mob arrived, raging about to find their cabins, 
shouting for stewards, collecting their trunks and 
bags, clamouring for those that had been mislaid, 
crowded and hampered at every step, and sitting 
down wearily in exhaustion, giving it all up, their 
nerves unstrung with the nausea of excitement be- 
fore the steamer had even begun to move. 

Ruth, in the obscurity of her cramped position, 
holding her small dressing bag with her few valu- 
ables tightly in her hand, pressed and almost sub- 
merged by the mass of people about her, watched 
the luxurious party on the deck of the neigh- 
bouring tender. She followed every movement 
of her London travelling companion, who 
had busied himself in attending to one of the 
ladies and was now conversing with a portly 
and ruddy man of about sixty, whose assured air 
of self-importance marked him as the chief or- 
ganiser and leader of the party — a real boss. She 

23 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

overheard the remarks and comments of the people 
about her, who were all looking at the same scene. 
For a moment the mere fact that she had been 
travelling in the same carriage with the young 
man, who formed part of this objectionable com- 
pany, whose face she had studied with such inter- 
est and every line of which she seemed to know 
intimately, — for a moment she felt an impulse like 
loyalty to friends, as if she must stand up for him 
in the face of such flaunting vulgarity and shoddy- 
ism. She watched him as he moved about; and 
every movement, the calm, almost retiring, man- 
ner in which he never showed himself fully to the 
assembled crowd, and the almost studious attempt 
not to look at them, made her feel that he was not 
of the party, that he really was a different kind of 
man. 

At this moment he was standing with his back 
to them, leaning against the railings, impassive and 
immovable, while the two young ladies of the 
party, smartly dressed and exuberant in their 
lively chatter, were talking to him and were di- 
rectly facing the crowd below. They seemed to 
be enjoying the very contrast of their comfort. 
Ruth felt sure that they were making remarks, 
meant to be comic, on the bedraggled, excited or 
wearied looks of the travellers below ; and she be- 

24 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

gan to resent the higher opinion she had formed 
of him before. How could he stand that? How 
could he be associated with such people at all ? 

"Why, don't you know who he is?" she heard 
a heavy-moustached, showily dressed man in a 
light suit and a new top hat, evidently a "drum- 
mer," say to his lean, dyspeptic-looking Western 
colleague in a round hat and new frock coat, 
"Why that is Sam Beek, the J. Y. O. railway 
king. He's a 'plunger!' He could buy up half 
the kings in Europe if he liked." 

He imparted this information in a loud voice 
with gusto, and evidently felt that his familiarity 
with such a notable reflected distinction upon him- 
self. He continued to give details of the wealth 
of the railway king, of the big deals of this — the 
"smartest man west of the Rockies" ; and took 
pains to mention the names of all the parties con- 
cerned, carefully adding the abbreviated Christian 
names as he rolled them off. 

"And who is that tall old man with the grey 
whiskers and the white cravat?" the round-hatted 
man continued to ask. "He must be a parson. 
Perhaps he's the parson and the young fellow the 
doctor. The one smooths the road to heaven, 
while the other blocks it up with medicine chests, 
and both of them stoop down and pick up the gold 

25 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

which he drops on the rails as he steams along on 
the J. Y. O. express." 

A tall stout man in a black coat and ostentatious 
white tie, — accompanied by a thin, worn, plaintive 
looking woman in a bonnet, and a tall, burly, red- 
faced girl in a white linen suit with crimson rib- 
bons, the image of the round-faced man, — turned, 
twisting his fat neck, and stared with frowning 
eyes at the Western "drummer." The young 
lady in white spoke at her father rather than to 
him, and her words were clearly meant for her 
neighbours. 

"Mr. Sandeman is not only a Christian, but 
even a gentleman. If all the people one met were 
like him, it would be a pleasure to travel, wouldn't 
it, father?" There had evidently been some travel- 
ling altercation between the "drummers" and the 
clergyman before. 

"Yes, daughter," said the clergyman in a drawl- 
ing voice, singing and nasal ; "Mr. Sandeman 
might well be a clergyman. I have often found 
him more familiar with some portions of theo- 
logic lore than myself. I should think that a man 
of such unbounded Christian charity as the 
founder of the Home for Strayed Revellers 
worthy of respect, even from heathens. I have 
seen no nobler or more practically efficacious in- 

26 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

stitution in the whole of my European wander- 
ings, — excepting perhaps the Golgotha Asylum of 
Life in the Holy Land, and ..." 

Here the voice of the top-hatted "drummer" 
drowned that of the clergyman. He had been 
puzzled before as to the identity of the white- 
whiskered man on the other tender. Now he 
bawled out. 

"Bill Sandeman is one of the biggest philan- 
thropists in New York. He knows more about 
running an Asylum, or a Home for Inebriates, or 
a penitentiary, museum or college, than any man 
in the country. He is the real head of the solidest 
commission house in New York. H it wasn't for 
him, Brewster, Sandeman and Lucas would have 
bust up in the '73 panic. Old Charlie Brewster 
and Sam Lucas lost their heads. They are no- 
where for cool sharpness. ..." 

And then Ruth listened to the family in front of 
her. The meek and worn old lady was saying in 
a moaning yet penetrating voice to her husband : 

"He is in very truth a very good and noble man 
— and considerate. You know, Abraham, that his 
was the first name to that letter from your par- 
ishioners urging you to take a year's trip to the 
Holy Land to restore your nervous debility. What 
a pity you did not see him on shore, and we might 

27 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

have been spared all this annoyance." And she 
looked longingly up at the deck of the million- 
aire's chartered vessel. 

"I shook hands with Mr. Sandeman in the ves- 
tibule of the hotel," the husband continued pom- 
pously. "He was very busy with his party. He 
is . . ." 

And here the drawl of the Western drummer 
again caught her ear. 

"I suppose that young fellow is an English lord. 
Our rich men must always have a lord hanging 
about them, that's part of the show. I suppose he 
is fooling round one of those girls and their 
oof. That's what's ruining our country, the unpa- 
triotic foolery of our rich men ! As if some of our 
young fellows out West wasn't as good and ten 
times better. ..." 

And she listened no more. 



28 



CHAPTER III 

MEANWHILE, poor George Van Zant was 
quite innocent, and was in no way to blame 
for the ostentatious surroundings which elicited 
all this comment. It had all come about very 
simply and he had drifted into the party without 
intention or forethought. 

On the morning of sailing he had found himself 
face to face with Mr. Sandeman in the hall of the 
hotel at Liverpool. The luggage arranged in 
masses about the hall, the porters and travellers 
running about — all betokened the departure of one 
of the great Atlantic liners. Van Zant had a 
physical shrinking from such bustle and confu- 
sion ; it was almost acute pain to him ; it paralysed 
his will and put him into a kind of hypnotic trance. 
Instead of bracing up his energies and arranging 
for his own departure, he was lolling about the 
hall, watching the activity and confusion about him 
with distant eyes, as if he were witnessing a play. 
His meeting with Mr. Sandeman recalled him to 
reality and made him at once conscious of the task 
before him and the part he had set himself to play 
in a new life, contrastng so markedly with his 

29 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ten years of study and calm contemplation free 
from responsibilities. 

He had deliberately and firmly resolved to take 
up a new career in America, to forego contempla- 
tion, fastidious reserve, the search for, and the 
enjoyment of, life's refinements, with the careful 
avoidance of all conditions that were vulgar or 
commonplace and ungainly. Above all he meant 
to seek for what was best in the people he met, 
and to show them the appreciativeness and affa- 
bility which the good in them deserved. 

Though he had not seen Mr. Sandeman since he 
was a schoolboy, he recalled the fact that he was 
his father's friend, a truly honourable man, and 
one possessed of intellectual and moral qualities 
beyond those which made him a successful busi- 
ness man and a prominent philanthropist. And 
herein he was right. For Mr. Sandeman had not 
only read a great deal (with perhaps a too nar- 
row exclusiveness as regards the literature he 
dogmatically undertook to class as superior and 
elevating), but had travelled much. Above all, he 
possessed dignity of character and manner, the 
result of this very self-reliance and dogmatic at- 
one-ness with his main views of life. There was 
no vacillation and uncertainty of touch about him, 
which often detract from the dignity of people 

30 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

more just and refined in feeling than Mr, Sande- 
man, and who perceive and consider the moral 
atmosphere in which they find themselves and 
adapt themselves to it. 

Mr. Sandeman's greeting of his old friend's son 
was cordial ; and when he heard the younger man's 
dread of the embarkation, he at once said : 

"Oh, you must join our party. Mr, Beek and I 
have chartered a tender and we expect an omni- 
bus in a quarter of an hour. My wife is rather 
delicate and I am glad to spare her this trial. There 
she is. Do you remember her? Come, let me in- 
troduce you to the other members of our party." 

And so he was presented to Mrs. Sandeman 
and the others. 

Mrs. Sandeman was a refined and matronly 
woman, essentially quiet and mild, and yet with a 
suspicion of firmness and decision lurking some- 
where well concealed from view. She had beauti- 
ful white hair, and soft blue eyes — a truly lovable 
face such as many American mothers have. It 
must be that in them the refinement of the world 
and of an active social life is thoroughly blended 
with a domestic tone of warm comfort and family 
ajffection, net loudly obtrusive and clamorous as is 
the case in France and Germany, and still not as 
off-hand and suppressed as in England. Her large 

31 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

family of boys and girls was scattered about the 
world, all following, without constant interference 
or claims of filial devotion, their several vocations 
and interests, and yet manifesting childlike sub- 
mission and tenderness in their frequent visits to 
the parental home. Mrs. Sandeman at once sug- 
gested the woman of the world, who knew and ap- 
preciated all the niceties of social manners. One 
could imagine her dressed brilliantly and in ex- 
cellent taste with rare jewels — though she now 
wore a travelling dress of extreme simplicity — dis- 
pensing a graceful hospitality, and quietly encour- 
aging the shy and subduing the exuberant un- 
known to them. At the same time, and above all, 
one felt in her the mother who had sat by the bed- 
side of her children when they were ill, had 
mourned deeply over the death of a little one, had 
played with them, quietly reprimanded them, 
gently but firmly ; had mended her girls' dolls and 
sewn their dresses, had listened with unfeigned 
earnestness to the impressive account of her boys' 
games and the internal affairs of their school life, 
had welcomed and treated as young friends her 
children's friends, when they spent weeks with 
them at their country home during the holidays. 
One knew that she was familiar with every de- 
partment of her great household, that she kept 

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careful account of the large expenditure it en- 
tailed, and that she entered as well into all the com- 
plicated financial transactions which her husband 
confided to her sympathetic judgment, when he 
returned harassed from business, and often got 
help and clear-sighted advice from her. One felt 
convinced that she kept in gentle control the rest- 
ive Irish and other foreign servants in her large 
household, and was a friend and adviser to many 
a "Lizzy" and "Mary" among them when they 
were in trouble, even long after they had left her 
service. And thus, having well begun her charity 
at home, one felt sure that there was enough cor- 
dial vitality left in her to go far afield and abroad 
and dispense her gentle kindness to poor and sick, 
as well as to rich and sane in the wide world, far 
away from her own domestic circle. 

Van Zant was so much and so pleasantly en- 
grossed in Mrs. Sandeman, who at once spoke of 
his own parents and of bygone days, that he 
hardly noticed the stout, red-faced man who shook 
him cordially by the hand with a "glad to make 
your acquaintance, sir." Beside him were two 
showily dressed, lively girls, who seemed full of 
good spirits and an elderly lady, evidently their 
mother. 

He had completely recovered from his troubled 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and dazed fear of the embarkation ; and when he 
was told that all he need do was to point out his 
own luggage, and then found himself in the omni- 
bus with his new friends, driving to the landing 
stage, he blessed the kind star that had brought 
such good fortune to him. 

But the moment he stepped on the deck of the 
tender and witnessed the scene beside them, he felt 
an uneasiness and a sadness of heart which made 
him regret the more physical discomfort of the 
embarkation in mass. Not only did the direct and 
immediate impression of this flaunting contrast, 
with its shock to his social feeling and taste, pro- 
duce a sickening revolt and protest ; but it flew in 
the face of all his settled convictions, which he had 
thought out and lived through these many years, 
until they had become part of his emotional nature, 
a mental habit and instinct. 

After much reading, thought and experience of 
life, he had come to the conclusion that positive 
socialism was an ideal unattainable in the imme- 
diate future, and, therefore, undesirable as a prac- 
tical guide to individual action in the present. He 
did not think it necessary, nor desirable, that the 
standards of refined living should be lowered. The 
advancement of comfort and even luxury, which a 
highly developed civilisation had painfully evolved 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

after ages of struggle with barbarism, he felt con- 
vinced ought to be jealously guarded. For sav- 
agery was never wholly extinct in human com- 
munities, nay it was always in full offensive ar- 
mour, to throw down and annihilate what man's 
intellect and taste had snatched from the struggle 
of material existence. 

Wherever individual wealth could create and 
produce such conditions of refinement — even 
though they could not be extended to all — it was 
right that they should be confirmed and enjoyed. 
There was nothing wrong in that his party should 
use every legitimate means of avoiding the tortures 
of the ordinary embarkation, and should charter 
a steamer, if their means allowed them to do this, 
— especially in view of the delicate health of an 
elderly lady. Yet, though there was no need of 
secrecy, it should have been done quietly and pri- 
vately. But Van Zant felt that thus to flaunt the 
exceptional good fortune, which wealth enabled 
one to enjoy, in the face of so many people less 
favourably placed — even suffering the pain which 
one had succeeded in avoiding — was unsocial, be- 
sides being in bad taste. 

As he stood on the deck of the tender talking to 
the two Miss Beeks, he felt impatient, even angry, 
with them for their insensibility to all these facts ; 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and when they pointed to the crowd and re- 
marked upon their bedraggled looks, he feared 
that he would betray his irritation, and so he left 
them as the tender moved off, and sat beside Mrs. 
Sandeman. 

She noticed his altered mood and at once dis- 
cerned the cause. She had similar feelings her- 
self, and was offended in her taste. But when they 
talked it over, compassion for their fellow-travel- 
lers, especially the women and children, was up- 
permost in her ; while he dwelt more upon the gen- 
eral social aspect of the question. 

Before they started, for one second, his eyes 
had met those of Ruth Ward as she gazed up from 
the crowd below, and he at once looked away. It 
pained him to see her there. 

The graceful, slim and well-knit figure of the 
girl had attracted his attention at Euston Sta- 
tion in London. Her light and firm walk, the 
fearless way she carried her head and moved 
about with independence and without fussy hurry, 
made him single her out among the crowd; 
and when he caught a glimpse of her face, 
he at once determined to get into the same carriage 
with her, even if he had to forego his smoke for a 
few hours. He too had studied her face while they 
sat opposite each other, though not with that calm, 

36 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

manifest scrutiny or with the dispassionate profes- 
sional analysis of an artist. 

He was chiefly struck by the general effect of such 
delicate beauty, beaming from eyes with long 
lashes, the spiritual purity and grace in all the fea- 
tures of the countenance, framed by her thick 
hair, the Madonna face, which still had the 
sprightly life and vivacity, the craving for 
amusement of the American girl, and beneath 
its softness and intensity the lurking spirit of 
humour. But in repose the most marked traits of 
the face were character, decision and purpose. 

Nay, these features were so predominant that 
this counteracted in his feelings the powerful at- 
traction she had at once exercised over him and 
set his thoughts, as he sat there, to oppose them- 
selves to the emotional impulse which drew him 
towards her. For the eager and earnest look, the 
preoccupied restlessness which battled against the 
natural repose, as well as the cheerfulness and 
brightness, of her face, had left their traces on 
her countenance. 

"Poor thing," he thought, "she is not exactly 
the school-ma'am who has struggled to amass the 
needed money for a European tour, nor is she the 
poor artist slaving away in studios against un- 
toward circumstances and means, a needy family 

Z7 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

impatiently awaiting the material profit of so 
much sacrifice, and — a fundamentally inartistic 
temperament and education in herself." 

"No," he continued to think as he stared blankly 
out of the railway carriage, "she is not that; for 
her dress and her bearing and manner have a cer- 
tain style which speaks of affluence. But she has 
been contaminated by it. The "struggle" about 
her has exercised contagion ; or, at all events, the 
intensity of the enthusiasm in the struggle and the 
"protest" have tended that way. Even in her dress 
and the manner of doing her hair I perceive the 
fading, withering effect of the scorching, parching 
sun of Bohemia or Altruria." 

And he recalled his innumerable experiences of 
such types during his ten continuous years in 
Europe, which left in him a melancholy distaste, 
a depressing fear. At all events, they no longer 
attracted him. 

At first he had been charmed and elated when 
he came across the warm, almost fierce, enthu- 
siasm of his countrymen and women for the his- 
toric beauty and spirituality of the great past, for 
the living art and science, the traditions and asso- 
ciations, the social maturity and secureness of 
their European mother countries. They mingled 
in their glowing natures the energy and vigour of 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

the backwoodsmen with the civiHsed taste and re- 
finements of ancient aristocrats, as they burrowed, 
dug and delved in the antique soil, exhausted and 
almost sterile as regards practical yield, yet rich 
and fertile with the treasures of past reminiscence 
and mature refinements of life. He had met the 
young graduate of youthful universities, who had 
undertaken "chores" to pay his way through col- 
lege; or the middle-aged schoolmaster, who had 
taught village boys and girls in elementary schools 
for years to save the needed money — he had met 
them in the lecture rooms of German professors, 
and at the giri of archaeologists at Athens and 
Rome, greedily drinking in the words of ancient 
lore in wrapt, almost religious, exaltation and 
gratitude. How it contrasted with the blase, mat- 
ter-of-fact, nay, materialistic bluntness of many 
refined Oxford and Cambridge men, whose enthu- 
siasm for learning, the traditions of lucrative 
scholarships at school and university, the pre- 
dominance of sport and the prestige of politics had 
effectively extirpated from their souls! He had 
lived in the young artist-communities where so 
many, with the same courage and sacrifice, were 
slaving away in Paris and London and Munich, 
but in the seventh heaven of spiritual delight, as 
they wandered through the museums and exhibi- 

39 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

tions, or walked in the often thick and sordid, yet 
to them limpid, atmosphere of the Latin Quarter. 
He had even forgiven the indiscriminate mass of 
American tourists their crude or gushing remarks, 
as they greeted the treasures of the Old World 
from the moment they strolled through the streets 
of Chester. Nay, to him, there was even some- 
thing to be said in favour of the naive and sincere 
admiration of peerages, titles and blazonry; for 
to these people they were simply life-illustrations 
to Shakespeare and Walter Scott, and their souls 
were thus freed from vulgarity. 

Many a time he had spoken to such Americans 
without knowing them, had offered his services 
and had entered into many a life which otherwise 
would never have crossed his own. But soon the 
element of surprise at this interesting mixture of 
crudeness and simplicity with love and apprecia- 
tion of what is mature and completely refined 
lost its edge; the constant repercussion of the 
same impressions led to monotony. What had ap- 
peared exceptional became the rule; the same 
thoughts, the same feelings, expressed almost in 
the same language, were repeated to him again 
and again with the same warmth of enthusiasm, 
and with the same intensity of interest, which 
showed that they were quite spontaneous, original 

40 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and new to the one who enunciated them, as if 
they had never been felt, thought or expressed be- 
fore. He could almost have predicted what such 
persons would say the moment he met them: 
the same broad theories in which a certain grain 
of truth was mixed up with a mass of crudities 
and over-statement, and all expressed imperfectly 
and haltingly though with deepest conviction. 
He could almost have predicted their actions 
and the different stages of their mental develop- 
ment. He was utterly wearied with the attempt 
to guide them or sympathetically to modify their 
opinions. He might have written out, for con- 
stant use, a course of dialectic argument to meet 
their statements, which would have suited nearly 
every one of them. And so a weariness and a 
shrinking came over him the moment he met one 
of these people. 

But with this weariness there mingled a more 
active sense of opposition and intolerance. It was 
a distaste engendered by the very element of 
"struggle" stamped on their brows, and this had 
an additional personal intensity : He had passed 
through the raging sea of "struggle" himself, and 
had at last emerged into the calm waters of set- 
tled views and purpose. And these troubled wa- 
ters, as he looked out upon them from his serener 

41 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

haven, appeared ungainly and turbid ; they had not 
the grandeur of rushing storm-waves and huge 
breakers dashing against the rocks; they were 
more like pools and puddles, churned into petty 
turmoil by furious splashing, and sending feeble 
eccentric rings, that had once appeared great 
breakers, from the little centre of revolt against 
established order. Looking back upon his own 
past, Promethean revolt he saw as the self-im- 
posed and self -gratified exile from May fair to 
Fleet Street ; Maccabean steadfastness was carica- 
tured into Bohemian eccentricity. Eccentricity, 
and even originality, were no longer beautiful and 
certainly not sublime. The poetry was gone, and 
there remained but irritating jingle, which became 
positively distasteful. This reminiscence of his 
own past counteracted sympathy and justice 
towards others. 

Grave faults and passions once our own are the 
more readily forgiven in others; weaknesses and 
eccentricities recognised in others are the more in- 
tolerable from having once been ours. 

And thus it was that certain suggestions in 
Ruth's face and its expression, her dress and 
her bearing counteracted for the time the power- 
ful attraction which at first sight the girl had ex- 
ercised over George Van Zant. 

42 



CHAPTER IV 

WHEN Ruth Ward had relieved her feelings 
of disgust at the young man, whose nerves 
were too delicately refined to stand what was 
probably "the sacred rendering of Truth to Life in 
a book by one of the courageous masters of 
French fiction," she watched his steps as he ad- 
vanced and joined the two girls who were 
chatting and smiling together at the stern. They 
had been looking in his direction several times 
before and had passed where he was sitting while 
he was engrossed in his book. Now they at once 
entered into lively conversation with him. 

"That's right, that's the company that suits 
you !" Ruth said to herself sneeringly ; "there you 
will find security from the dreadful temptations of 
life, and respectability and ease and comfort. 
Thank heaven, that I have escaped from that! 
I hope I shall never be forced to live in that at- 
mosphere. But there is no danger." 

And she remembered gratefully how her 
parents had given her full liberty when she was at 
home in Boston ; how they did not force her into 
the highly respectable circle of their friends, but 

43 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

allowed her to choose her own from among the ar- 
tistic and literary people of that town ; had even en- 
couraged her to take up art and had never pressed 
her to join in the dances and parties of their 
wealthy and prominent friends and relations ; how, 
finally, they had even consented to allow her to go 
to Europe, to travel and to study art, though they 
had sent a poor spinster relative with her. But 
even this they had urged more on the ground of 
kindness to their delicate relative than from any 
suggestion that Ruth "required to be looked after." 
They had not protested when, a year after, they 
having spent some months with her in Paris, the 
spinster lady had returned alone and Ruth had 
begged for a few more years to complete her train- 
ing. All they asked was that she should spend 
three months every year with them in their Amer- 
ican home, should they not be able to join her in 
Europe. 

This condition required no insistence, for she 
was passionately devoted to her parents. Her fa- 
ther was in truth her most intimate friend, in spite 
of the radically different views they held on life 
and art. But even in these he never insisted upon 
enforcing his own views and respected her liberty 
of conscience and of thought. From the earliest 
years, though he had quoted, recommended and 

44 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

praised his favourite authors and thinkers, so that 
she was fairly famihar with them at second hand, 
he had allowed her to read whatever she chose. 
These were generally books recommended by a 
youngish old lady, a leading member of an ad- 
vanced ladies' society from the wealthy world, 
who besides being devoted to good works, had 
found time to study medicine in America and 
Germany, and art in Paris, and though of the 
severest morality in her own life, had advanced 
views on matrimony, politics — in fact on most 
things. It was but a passing influence which this 
lady had exercised upon Ruth in her early years 
and lasted but a short time. She was then about 
eighteen years old and had already had enough 
dances and picnics and innocent flirtations with 
"best boys." But her friend's influence had been 
intense while it lasted; and though she had now 
almost forgotten that period of her life and the 
advanced thinker and reformer, it had perhaps 
determined the general drift and trend of her 
thought for all the subsequent years. 

She felt the gulf of thought, feeling, experience 
and aspiration that must separate her from those 
two young persons with whom the young man was 
now talking. It is true the "expenses" of the con- 
versation were entirely borne by the girls, who 

45 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

did not seem to grudge the sacrifice. "How could 
a man with such a face Hsten to such chatter?" 

The three now began to walk up and down and 
they passed her chair. She heard the words 
"drawing-room," "our carriage would not come," 
"tiara," "train." They were evidently describing 
to him their presentation to the Queen, at the 
Drawing Room in Buckingham Palace. And as 
they passed again she caught : "She is the sweet- 
est, cunningest old thing I have ever seen !" 

To this the "earnest reader" was listening with 
serious attention, and yet she thought she saw an 
amused twinkle in his face as the elder girl was 
thus describing the scene of the royal presenta- 
tion. 

She now began to scrutinise the girls' dresses. 
They were dressed alike. She had always decided 
that if she had had a sister, she would under no 
condition have gone in for wholesale purchases 
nor have flaunted their close family relationship in 
the face of the public. And these dresses began to 
interest her. They were no doubt "smart :" They 
were tailor-made. She knew what tailor in Lon- 
don had made them; dull tan whip-cord, a faded 
tint between brown and yellow, decidedly horsey. 
They were smart, and still there was something 
wrong; not only in the way they wore them, but in 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

the very make of them. The tailor had not taken 
real trouble with them. "They wouldn't know; 
anything will do" he probably said, and probably 
they were made in a hurry without trying on. If 
the differences in such simple and unadorned cos- 
tumes were slight and not easily recognised except 
by the expert, Ruth appreciated them, and they 
were then felt all the more. A certain loose or 
dishevelled touch in an evening or an ordinary 
woman-made dress, after all, suited the lines and 
the character of women, and there was a wider 
margin between what was good and positively ill- 
fitting and bad. But when the neatness and com- 
pactness of such tailor-made clothes encroached 
upon the severer, well-defined convention of male 
apparel, nay, the riding male who approached 
military discipline in his get up, the slightest neg- 
ligence or deviation became a distinct fault. The 
coats, with a touch of looseness in the back of the 
waist, were too loose; the wide pockets of the 
gown with their flaps were a trifle too far in front ; 
the only two folds in the smoothly falling texture 
on either side came too far behind, and thus made 
the plain surface of the gown too wide in front — 
"and then they were badly put on and badly 
worn." 

There was a delicate sneer of exultant superi- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ority in her face as she noted all this. And she rose 
with determination from her chair. 

"I'll show them and him what the real thing is 
like," she said to herself. "But I dare say they 
won't appreciate the difference. And he? Well, 
he . . ." 

And she hastened down to her cabin. Before she 
began to unpack she looked at herself in the mir- 
ror, and an expression of displeasure, even vexa- 
tion, came over her face. Her hair and her dress 
seemed to her disorderly and slovenly and travel- 
stained. Her blouse was crumpled, her large 
straw hat with feathers seemed singularly 
out of place on board a steamer. She made up her 
mind to change completely. So she began to un- 
pack hastily. It was hard work, for the dress she 
was seeking was, as is usual, at the bottom of her 
trunk. It was a tailor-made suit, similar to those 
worn by the Beek girls ; but the whip-cord, instead 
of tan colour, was of a rich steel grey. 

After she had washed and sat before her mirror, 
combing and braiding her hair, the colour had 
come to her face and she looked flushed and eager. 
She could not help smiling at herself in the mir- 
ror — she was reminded of her early girlhood and 
unconsciously felt herself transplanted back to 
those thoughtlessly happy days. There was a girl- 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ish activity and determination as she braided her 
hair, this time firmly and neatly — without waves 
and fluffiness — as suited a tailor-made girl. It was 
all to be firm and compact. She brought an ear- 
nestness into this business of dressing which she 
had not experienced since she took up art and seri- 
ous study. When she had put on her grey dress, 
she sat pondering with knit brow over the impor- 
tant question of the hat. 

"What hat would go with that dress?" 
This was indeed a problem. The broad 
straw hat with feathers she had been wearing was 
quite out of the question; nor would any of the 
more elaborate hats do. The hat which harmo- 
nised best with it was a black, stiff round hat which 
she wore with her riding habit. But she felt the 
incongruity of wearing it on shipboard ; it was a 
little too orthodox with the whip-cord, and had a 
touch of horse-marine. She remembered her 
brother once sneering at men who walked the 
decks of ships in knickerbockers or riding gaiters. 
Caps she had three: a Tam O'Shanter, a grey 
tweed golfing cap, and a small check double- 
peaked stalking cap. The two latter might do; 
but it was — well — a little too much. Suddenly she 
rose with a happy inspiration ; and though it meant 
the trouble of going with the steward to the bag- 

49 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

gage room, she succeeded in capturing her double 
hat box. She took from it a neat felt Tyrolese hat 
which came from Homburg. It was of a dark 
bottle green with a bird's black wing stuck firmly 
in the side. As she put it on and looked at herself 
in the mirror, she was perfectly satisfied. 

There was still some questioning in her mind 
as to the tie for her high turn-down man's collar 
to go with her grey suit and green hat. The choice 
lay between three: a really good violet — this, 
though a fine combination with dark green and 
grey, was too much colour for a steamship at sea 
— a beautiful shade of green, still dark, but lighter 
than her hat, and a black silk. The last was cer- 
tainly safest and most refined ; but she decided upon 
the green, which had more colour and had a vague 
suggestion of the grey tones over the sea and the 
green waves. 

When Ruth appeared on deck there was a firm- 
ness and an elastic spring in her walk, and in her 
a fresh enjoyment of the sea and an unconscious- 
ness of the people about her. She was happy in 
herself and with the great ocean. Still she soon be- 
gan to look for the three people who had given the 
first stimulus to her metamorphosis in appearance 
— and in her mood. She now perceived the two 
sisters walking side by side in a bored manner. 

so 



V/HAT MAY WE READ? 

They evidently had not much to say to each other. 
The earnest reader had left them. No doubt he 
had soon had enough of drawing-rooms and tiaras 
and trains. But as she approached and passed 
them, she noticed with some exultation their in- 
terested stare, and she felt convinced they would 
turn and look at her after she had passed. As a 
matter of fact she noticed that when she came to 
the end of the deck and turned back, she at once 
encountered the two girls again, whom she ought 
not to have met till half way down if they had not 
turned back at once after passing her. 

But she did not trouble much about the girls 
nor about the promenaders whom she passed, or 
the people who were lining the decks in their 
chairs. She looked over the sea and at the sky, 
and was intensely happy. She was reminded of 
what her father said to account for his dressing 
for dinner even when alone. "I do it for my- 
self. It has the greatest moral effect. You get 
rid of your workaday thoughts and worries 
and moods in shedding your workaday clothes. 
Soap and water wash away more than dust and 
dirt." 

It was some time before she perceived Van 
Zant, who was sitting with Mrs. Sandeman in in- 
terested conversation. The older lady had at once 

51 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

noticed the young girl and had pointed her out 
to the young man. 

"Now there is a really pretty girl! And how 
quietly elegant she is ! She is the only interesting 
and truly attractive person I have yet seen on 
board," the old lady said, while her eyes followed 
Ruth. 

Van Zant had indeed noticed Ruth, as well as 
the radical change in her appearance, and he sat 
staring after her so that he missed Mrs. Sande- 
man's remark. The old lady continued : 

"She is certainly a lady. Can she be quite 
alone ? I wonder whether she is English or Amer- 
ican? If she is alone she must certainly be Amer- 
ican." 

By this time Van Zant had recovered from his 
stare. "I am sure she is American, and I should 
have said artistic, a young lady studying art 
abroad — though I am beginning to doubt it," Van 
Zant said, while he still followed the girl with his 
eyes and shook his head questioningly. 

"She is very pretty," said Mrs. Sandeman. 

"She is almost beautiful," he added. 

"How graceful she is," remarked the old lady 
as she ended her scrutiny and turned to Van Zant. 
"Yes, none but an American girl could travel alone 
like that. And none but an American girl could 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

walk up and down with such self-possession, and 
yet without a touch of effrontery and forward- 
ness. You see," — and she seemed to be continu- 
ing their previous talk — "self-reliance, as well as 
the adaptability you mentioned, is one of the lead- 
ing features of American women. It required the 
peculiar training from infancy upwards which our 
girls get, to give her such dignity without shyness, 
when she has to walk alone on the crowded deck 
of a steamer." 

The self-reliance and even the dignity were be- 
ginning to wane in poor Ruth Ward. The ebul- 
lient delight in her own health, in the fresh air, 
and the grand placidity of the sea were passing 
slowly out of her. 

She had noticed Van Zant seated with Mrs. 
Sandeman, the one lady who had at once attracted 
her. She immediately perceived the change in 
Van Zant's demeanour and in the expression of his 
face, as he talked to the old lady, from what they 
had been while he sat silently in the railway car- 
riage, and while he was chatting with the Beek 
girls. There was an animation, a pliancy, a hum- 
ble desire to please, or rather to give pleasure, which 
gave new life and soul to the whole face. She saw 
all this at one glance, and above all, in that one 
glance she saw the smile which lit up the serious 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and almost hard face to a softness, a sunny bright- 
ness and pleading affectionateness which one ex- 
pected only in a child. It moved her singularly. 

"The painter can never give that to a face," she 
thought with a sigh. 

But then she also began to realise and to feel 
with some discomfort that she was quite alone, 
and her firm and unconcerned walk lost its natural- 
ness. Was she tired? She would have liked to 
lean on some one, to take the arm of some com- 
panion, and to chat and listen. 

And she began to scrutinise the people whom be- 
fore she had not looked at, searching for some 
known face, even that of a chance acquaintance. 
Were there no Boston people on board who knew 
her or her family? Surely there must be. But 
where were they? 

Looking at the people, who looked back at her 
with varying degrees of inquisitiveness or en- 
couraging affability, did not help to maintain the 
dignity and self-reliance in her walk. And the two 
Beek girls, who were manifestly discussing her 
with animation, began to irritate her intensely. It 
was indeed hard to remain dignified and uncon- 
cerned, to manifest to others that one did not need 
them and was quite happy by one's self, when one 
was utterly alone among a laughing, chatting 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

crowd of people who would look and make re- 
marks — perhaps compassionate remarks — upon 
one's loneliness. If only she had a girl, anybody 
to turn to and walk with, to whom she could at 
least direct her eyes, to avoid looking at the people, 
or to stare fixedly or dismally before her, to 
change her expression, instead of looking sad or 
bored or ridiculously serious ! 

And so she stopped walking in disgust and 
leaned over the side of the ship and gazed over the 
sea and towards the horizon. 

Soon all the irritation left her and she forgot all 
about the ship, the people, the two girls, the young 
man. There was a gentle breeze springing up from 
the southwest, there were ripples and small lap- 
ping waves all over the sea, and the sky was fill- 
ing with clouds in the west, as if to stem the prog- 
ress of the sun that was sinking down in slow 
majesty towards the horizon, followed in its 
stately progress by a number of small fleeting 
clouds and vapours, that were borrowing brill- 
iancy of varied coloured apparel from the great 
company to whose court they were flocking. Her 
eyes drank it all in and her soul was filled with 
the delight of it. She stood motionless. 

Nor did she start and move when she heard a 
voice near her, a mellow, deep voice, dwelling upon 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

each beauty of form and colour that her eyes were 
drinking in. The voice, the clear enunciation of 
beautiful English words, the rhythm of the sen- 
tences, and the sincere tone of controlled emotion 
which gave soul to the sound, seemed the lyrical, 
the musically harmonious, setting to the visual 
harmony of the scene before her. The details as 
he enumerated them she had hardly noticed before, 
the delicate changes in the forms and tints had not 
struck her as continuous movement, but had been 
disjointed pictures; and now the details and 
the changes seemed fixed in repose in a greater 
harmony, like a poem or a complete composition 
of music. 

She had never heard a voice like that before, she 
had never been moved by the beauty of a sunset 
as much as on that evening. She did not turn to 
see who the speaker was ; she felt, she knew, that 
it could only be that of the young man with the 
poet's face, and that he could only be talking thus 
to the lady with the blue eyes and the soft white 
hair, the only two people among the crowd who 
could thrill with the beauty of God's great world. 

And suddenly the mood snapped. A harsfi 
loud voice with a sharp nasal twang shouted : 

"I have just had a talk with the first officer. I'm 
mighty afraid this weather won't last. There's 

S6 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

mischief in those clouds down there, and we may 
be in for some pitching and rolHng. I hope you're 
a good sailor, ma'am. Now let's get our dinner 
while we can keep it. The gong has gonged away 
a long while." 

She turned and recognised as Mr. Beek the 
man who had disturbed Mrs. Sandeman and Van 
Zant. 



S7 



CHAPTER V 

BY a curious coincidence Ruth sat in immediate 
proximity to the Beek party. She had neg- 
lectea to secure her place at once upon arriving, 
when there always is a scramble for seats at the 
captain's table. She was astonished that Mr. Beek 
had not claimed that honour for himself. But the 
reason for the choice of his table and the separa- 
tion and privacy which it gave his party soon be- 
came evident. There were rows of long tables, 
seating each about ten passengers on either side, 
extending the whole length of the saloon. On the 
port side the one was headed by the captain ; the 
purser and doctor presided over others, while the 
starboard side had no presiding officer of the ship. 
Here it was that Mr. Beek sat in state. On his 
right was Mrs. Sandeman, beside her the earnest 
reader, followed by the elder Miss Beek, while 
Mrs. Beek sat at her husband's left and Mr. Sande- 
man between her and the younger Miss Beek. 
To make it a distinct and compact party an empty 
space was left which would have seated two or 
three passengers; and then followed Miss Ward, 
who had an uninteresting old man, apparently 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

deaf into the bargain, beside her, followed by a 
line of other travellers. 

Unlike her feelings while walking on deck, she 
was grateful to find that her immediate neighbour 
was not talkative and that she could sit without 
conversing. She was pleased also to be on the 
side opposite Mrs. Sandeman, for it was a delight 
to feast her eyes on her placid, motherly counte- 
nance. Of course it was also interesting to have 
her railway travelling companion to look at, 
though she no longer subjected his face to the same 
severe analytical scrutiny as in the railway car- 
riage. One thing, however, she did remark as a 
continuation of her artist's mood : his hair, about 
which she had wondered when she could only see 
him with his hat on. It suited the picture exactly 
— no, not quite — for though it was dark and thick 
and neatly combed from the parting on the side, it 
had a beautiful natural wave in it, too soft in char- 
acter for the severity of the face, and there were 
streaks of grey which seemed premature. 

Even if she had tried not to listen to the conver- 
sation of the party near her, she could not have 
helped overhearing most of what was said; for 
Mr. Beek spoke in a loud, penetrating voice, and 
Mrs. Sandeman and the younger man sat suf- 
ficiently near. Still every now and again she made 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

a positive effort not to listen, while throughout 
she took pains not to manifest any interest in them. 

At an early stage of the dinner she heard Mr. 
Beek addressing the whole party, Van Zant in 
particular. 

"Yes, I have made it all right and cosy. You 
couldn't be looked after better. Trust Sam Beek 
for that ! I feed the chief steward and the saloon 
steward and sent a gratuity to the cook, the deck- 
steward — I don't know who else. There's such a 
lot of them. But I think it is well-spent money 
to give something to these people; it oils the ma- 
chine. And then the poor devils have a hard life 
and they deserve something for their extra 
trouble." 

"Have you enquired whether the grouse and 
the fruit have arrived?" asked Mrs. Beek; and 
then, speaking to Mrs. Sandeman, "Our English 
friends have been so kind and attentive. The Duke 
of Hampstead wrote that he had sent some grouse 
to the steamer for us, and the Earl of Thrapton 
has sent some of his excellent hothouse fruit. 
Weren't those wonderful grapes?" she appealed 
to her eldest daughter. 

"I have seen the fruit all placed in the ice- 
box," her husband assured her. "They look 
fine. And I have arranged with the cook about 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

the grouse. There are just a dozen birds ; and so 
I told him to have a couple of grouse for every 
dinner. That will just about see us through." 

'Tt is a 'brace of grouse,' dear papa," corrected 
the eldest daughter, "a brace of grouse, a pair of 
partridges, and a couple of pheasants. Isn't that 
what they say, Mr. Van Zant?" 

Mr. Van Zant did not like being appealed to in 
this way, and did not wish to correct either of 
them. "Yes," he said, "I believe they do say a 
brace of grouse, a brace of partridges and a couple 
of ducks." 

"You won't regret having joined our party, 
Mr. Van Zant," Mr. Beek nodded to the young 
man with a wink; "the ladies have delicate appe- 
tites at sea and so I've arranged to put some va- 
riety into these regulation luncheons on board, 
and we delicate men can share their diet." 

Van Zant looked somewhat uncomfortable, for 
he thought he felt Ruth's eyes on him, and he 
said : "Thank you very much ; but I have the pe- 
culiar taste to like the ordinary fare of the ship, 
and I prefer to stick to it. I am accustomed to it." 

Meanwhile, Mrs. Beek was giving Mrs. Sande- 
man a rather brilliant and emphatic, though not 
graphic, account of Upton Castle, the seat of the 
Duke of Hampstead, and of the great attention 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

they had received there as well as at Dugmore, 
the seat of Lord Thrapton, and of the distin- 
guished people they had met. In mentioning some 
of these she turned to Van Zant. "Do you not 
know them? You have lived in England some 
years?" 

"Hardly," Van Zant answered. Though he did 
not mind Mrs. Beek's talking about English peers 
and was interested in the way the life struck her, 
he disliked it much for himself. But he was soon 
forced into embarrassment by that subject. For 
the younger Miss Beek suddenly clapped her hands 
and said in manifest delight and excitement to her 
sister : 

"I have it now, Julia ! You know how we have 
both been puzzling where we had seen Mr. Van 
Zant before? Well I know it now. You remem- 
ber when we were in that lovely little boudoir with 
the lovely china at Dugmore, and we looked at the 
photographs standing about the writing tables. 
Don't you remember?" and she looked with an in- 
tent query at her sister. 

"I remember that, but what ..." 

"O you goosie! Don't you remember how we 
asked Lady Mary Mannering who the young man 
with the French artist's pancake cap was, and 
she said it was an American friend of theirs. I 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

remember now it was a Dutch New York name. 
Why, it was Mr. Van Zant," she laughed in tri- 
umphant glee. 

"Of course, it was," responded the sister, 
equally pleased. 

Van Zant could not quite hide his embarrass- 
ment while he said : 

"Lord Sevenoaks, Lord Thrapton's son, and I 
were together a good deal in England, and we 
lived in Paris together for some time. It is years 
since I have been at Dugmore. I like them very 
much, they are nice people." 

Fortunately for him Mr. Beek was then monop- 
olising the conversation, though he was address- 
ing himself chiefly to Mr. Sandeman. 

"The Duke of Hampstead is a bright man, and 
has got a business head on his shoulders. If he 
lived in America for a few years he would get 
the hang of it easily. He knows a good deal about 
railways — not as much as he thinks himself, 
though. He wanted me to tell him all about the 
Pan Handle and Omaho Western combine — 
asked me what I thought of it," and here he gave a 
chuckle. "I said, 'Just a little more, perhaps, than of 
the Wyoming Pacific just a few days before it went 
into the receiver's hands.' That frightened him." 

"The reckless way in which these English peo- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

pie invest in concerns they know nothing about is 
astounding," said Mr. Sandeman. Van Zant did 
not need to feign interest in the business talk of 
the two older men. He did not only feel that here- 
in Mr. Beek as well as Mr. Sandeman were mas- 
ters, and had all the dignity in this sphere which 
mastery of a subject gives, but he had made up 
his mind to serve his apprenticeship in business 
and was humbly respectful as a beginner. 

"There are enough instances I could tell you of, 
besides all the money they have put into South 
American republics. Why, I wouldn't look at most 
of the trash in our own stuff which they dump 
on the English market," Mr. Beek said with vivac- 
ity, and he began to enumerate a number of strik- 
ing instances in proof. 

"You know the rage for limited stock-com- 
panies a few years ago," Mr. Sandeman said in his 
quiet, clear-cut enunciation. "The English pro- 
moters were swarming over the continent ready 
to secure English capital for any big concern, 
however shaky it was. One of those fellows came 
to me about a tin factory down in Pennsylvania 
in which I am a partner, and made an offer of a 
large sum which he could raise in England, if we 
turned it into a company. My answer was that 
with my cousin and his partner, sharp business 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

men, who had no other business but to run those 
works, with a comparatively small and econom- 
ical staff, the profits would not secure more than 
five and a half per cent, on half the capital sum of 
his offer. He asked me what concern that was of 
mine if he made the offer. My answer to that was 
that I turned him out at once to find some one else 
through whom he could despoil his countrymen." 

The conversation became confidential between 
the two older men and was not audible. But Ruth 
was fascinated into following what Mrs. Sande- 
man was saying to Van Zant. 

"I don't know why," the old lady was saying, 
"but it disturbs me to see such business eagerness 
in people of that class in England. It doesn't suit 
them or they don't seem to do it well. And then 
they either appear to be half ashamed of it, or 
their usual bearing and manner seem unsuited to 
such interests. They can't be easily reconciled." 

"That's it, I believe. A feudal atmosphere, pre- 
tentions, or even habits, cannot well be harmo- 
nised with the Stock Exchange. But more 
definitely, it appears to me," the young man con- 
tinued, "that they are not to the (business ) man- 
ner born. They are in this respect 'bad form/ 
'Good form' generally means the rules and con- 
ventions established for each walk of life. So there 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

is also business 'good form/ in which they have 
not been trained. They wobble about. An 
amateur, a gentleman horse-dealer, is often far 
more untrustworthy than his professional col- 
league, because he knows no rules — not even the 
tradition of habitual sharpness." 

The two older men finished their confidential talk 
and the chatter became general to the end of the 
dinner. 

The party rose first and began to file out of the 
door to the companion-way leading to the deck. 

Van Zant waited at the door till the others had 
passed, and then, turning his head, he perceived 
Ruth behind him. He bowed and made room for 
her to pass first. Just as she was beside him, the 
ship gave a sudden and sharp lurch and she was 
thrown violently against him. As he was turned 
towards her, her shoulders struck his chest; and 
she might have fallen, had he not stood firm and 
quickly passed his left hand round her back and 
seized her hands with his right. He held her but 
for one second and smiled at her as he released 
her when the ship had steadied itself. It was an 
ordinary attitude into which the lurch had thrown 
them, less intimate than the position in dancing, 
still it drove the blood to her cheeks, and she was 
embarrassed as she thanked him and passed to her 
cabin. ^ 



CHAPTER VI 

THE lurch of the Majestic which had for a sec- 
ond sent Ruth Ward into the arms of George 
Van Zant was the signal for two whole troublous 
and stormy days. 

Ruth had intended to go to her cabin merely to 
take her cloak and rugs on deck with her. But the 
rolling and pitching of the ship, which was grow- 
ing more continuous and pronounced with every 
minute, gave her timely warning and made her 
wisely decide to go to bed at once and remain 
there quietly until the sea smoothed down, or for 
two days, if it continued rough. She had sufificient 
experience of sea-voyages to recognise the fallacy 
of the loudly proclaimed remedies of boister- 
ously healthy sailors, who recommended mov- 
ing about vigorously on deck, eating a 
"good meal" and drinking champagne and 
cognac. 

Remaining perfectly still she was never a poor 
sailor, and save for a dull headache, which rarely 
left her, she almost enjoyed the enforced idleness 
and repose ; while her diminished vitality left her 
no energy to fret or to grow impatient. When 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

restlessness came, energy returned, and it was the 
signal that she could venture on deck. 

Thus Ruth did not appear again that evening, 
nor the whole of the next day and night, while 
they were passing through rough water. 

She lay in the berth of her cabin and at first 
tried to read. It was not so much the effort which 
made her desist, as that her own thoughts proved 
more fascinating than any book. But even these 
did not keep her awake long. A delicious drowsi- 
ness came over her and she gradually dosed off 
into a heavy sleep, lulled by the gentle swaying 
of the ship. But before her clear thoughts merged 
into the full unconsciousness of sleep, she felt as if 
she were gently slipping to the side, very softly 
and slowly, and were as gently caught up in the 
arms of a man ; she felt a warm glow creep over 
her; she almost awoke; and then she saw clearly 
the face of the young man bending over her, and 
all merged in the blankness of slumber. 

Though the increased rolling of the ship 
awakened her several times during the night, these 
intervals must have been so momentary that she 
did not remember them in the morning, when she 
was awakened by the stewardess, who enquired 
whether she could bring her any breakfast. She 
felt weak and limp, but she was so happy in her 

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languorous repose that she decided not to risk a 
change. She persisted in this during the whole day 
in spite of the persuasive coaxing of the steward- 
ess. 

If she enjoyed a delicious languor, on the other 
hand, her weakness seemed to produce a feverish 
state in her in which she lost the firm control of 
her thoughts and moods. Her brain seemed to 
alternate between a rapid and clear activity of 
her imagination, and dull and confused vagueness 
in which the thoughts, scenes and pictures seemed 
to blend into one another and produce a dim, al- 
most musical mood. Perhaps these vaguer mo- 
ments were caused by, and corresponded to, the 
periods of half-slumber; for, though she could 
hardly remember it, she had fallen fast asleep for 
considerable periods during the day. 

The scenes which individually she thus saw 
clearly, and which gave vivid tone and colour to 
her moods, flitted first to her own Boston home: 
the study of her father, with the dear, gentle old 
man sitting in his chair with a book, turning his 
head and smiling with beaming love and joy at her 
as she entered ; then to the drawing-room of her 
mother, with her two aunts seated peacefully on 
either side of her mother with needlework in their 

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hands — absolute peace, mild dignity and benevo- 
lence. 

And then suddenly her imagination would carry 
her to a Paris studio, where she saw herself in her 
long French blouse of blue linen, such as the 
French artisans and peasants wear, only longer; 
and her fellow-students painting beside her. She 
could see herself and her friends as they all sat 
on their high stools and ate their goutter and chat- 
tered and chaffed each other, and then examined 
and criticised each other's work. She recalled 
how the grand maitre would come once a 
week and look over and criticise their drawings. 
She felt again vividly the stings and vexations, 
the heart-deadening discouragement, the fainting 
sense of nausea, which came over her when he was 
evidently displeased, and began with a distressed 
and pained expression and voice, as of a child 
about to burst into a fit of crying : "m<iis, ma chere 
enfant, ne voyez vous pas ..." He was always 
more affectionate and paternal in his language, the 
less he was pleased with the work. His partial 
approval was always ushered in by: "Mais, ma 
chere amie, il faut tacher . . ." ; while she was 
in the seventh heaven when he began, rubbing his 
hands between his knees as he was seated before 
her easel, his body bent forward, his legs far apart, 

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"Mais, ga va mieux, c'est tres hien, tres hien, ma- 
demoiselle;" and she did not mind the pourtant 
which followed, as he looked up at her and a frown 
succeeded the smile. 

She went to that studio at greater intervals now. 
She had a studio of her own in the Rue Roche- 
chouard on the other side of the river, and here she 
was queen. Distingnished artists sometimes came 
and criticised her work. Though she experienced 
all the painful emotions at their censure, still more 
when they proved indififerent or gently or flatly 
and superficially commendatory — a tone which she 
recognised as suiting the work of amateur friends 
— she no longer experienced the anguish of her 
early days at her master's atelier. 

And the delightful parties she had in her studio ! 
Her artist friends of various nationalities congre- 
gated there, with a sprinkling of girls studying 
music or acting at the conservatoire, with occa- 
sional intruders from the "bourgeois" people. 
They gave a touch of the monde to the gatherings ; 
but, wisely or forcibly, they had to keep their 
worldliness in the background, or it was quite 
merged in the free and easy familiarity and gaiety 
of the general tone. And there were men, as well 
as women, of various nationalities, chiefly, how- 
ever, American and English. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

And then, again, she was swayed by the vivid 
reminiscence of those joyous, deHcious parties in 
the country, to Meudon, to Fontainebleau, where 
she had passed months in the summer, and had 
drunk inspiration from the artist associations of 
the past, as well as from the exquisite beauty of 
the surrounding nature. And their gatherings, 
excursions and adventures during their Paris 
evenings — their escapades! How some of her 
prim Puritan friends at home would stare in icy 
consternation if they had gone with them to these 
most interesting and amusing places, where, after 
all, there was real life, free from the constraint 
of deadening conventionalities and hypocritical 
chains that enslaved the free-born temperament of 
genius, of all art-productiveness ! 

And then, suddenly, a cold shudder came over 
her and the blood seemed to congeal in her heart, 
as she recalled an experience which had disturbed 
her peace of mind for days, had made even Paris 
unattractive and had made her long for her home. 
It was a shock she experienced but a fortnight 
ago, when one of her artist friends, a man of 
some eminence, had accompanied her to her home 
after one of those escapades, and affronted her. 
She wished never to see him again ; he was hateful 
to her; nay, the memory was almost as odious as 

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the presence of that man. And, with an effort, she 
dispelled the hideous vision. 

But the figure which most constantly thrust it- 
self forward in her mind, and blended and inter- 
mingled with the scenes she recalled, was that of 
the young man who had flung the book into the 
sea. She thought of him clearly in the present as 
a member of that millionaire party ; and curiously 
enough, it was then with a kind of resentment, 
almost with animosity. She imagined some act of 
rudeness on his part or that of one of his com- 
panions ; — that they had quite underestimated her 
powers, or her social experience and tact; — and 
she then imagined striking incidents in which she 
would put him and them to rights, make them 
stare in humiliation at the ridiculous figures they 
would present. She saw herself met at the steamer 
by her father and his rich New York relative, one 
of the most prominent men of oldest standing 
there, driving away in the well-appointed carriage 
in a quiet and unostentatious, but impressive, man- 
ner. 

Not only thus did he enter her thoughts. But 
in the vaguer moments of blended imagery, when 
the outlines of the present faded into dimmer con- 
tours, and all the scenes were interchanged and 
intermingled as in a musical harmony, he intruded 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

himself gently, he even took the central place ; and 
then, too, her feelings for him were softer, less 
combative, in truth, they were those of a dear 
friend. Still she was the superior and leading 
figure, the Beatrice who led this young Dante 
through the hazy dreamland of her day-dreams in 
her half-slumber; she opened his provincial eyes 
to unknown scenes ; she widened his sympathies so 
that he could see the beauty and nobility of life in 
its every phase; she unfettered his heart from the 
cramped chains of a Puritanism which made him 
tremble at facing truth, and from which, thanks 
to her own strength of will, she had emancipated 
herself. 

And while she imagined herself painting at her 
easel, he sat there and watched her, wrapped in 
the mystery of artistic creation which was being 
unfolded before his eyes ; he was there, impressed 
and appreciative, as she dispensed joyous and 
original hospitality in her studio; he was with 
them on their picnics into the country, their wild 
and unconventional evenings in Paris — perhaps 
even at the Chat noir; and her presence enabled 
him to ignore what might have struck him before 
as bad, forcing him to recognise the great genius 
of life in every one of even its crudest manifesta- 
tions. And then the scene itself, the setting of the 

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picture, vanished, and she saw his grateful face 
alone. All grew confused and blurred, and a 
sudden snap or lurch nearly awakened her out 
of her half-slumber ; but it only gave her the vision 
of an arm and a hand thrust with a shake before 
her eyes, and a book sailed and glided through the 
air, with a trembling of its opening leaves, like a 
wounded bird with fluttering, maimed wings, 
struggling in the air and dropping into the sea, 
where it vanished forever. 



75 



CHAPTER VII 

VAN ZANT, too, suffered from the discomfort 
of the bad weather. It was too "dirty" to 
make it possible to sit out on deck or even to walk 
much. Though he was not a bad sailor, his head 
and eyes were affected, and he could not read for 
any length of time with comfort and pleasure. 

Even if this had not been so, he found it difficult 
to select a sheltered and quiet place. The ladies' 
room was stuffy and disagreeable; and the com- 
pany in the smoking-room, with its aggressive loud- 
ness, made it impossible for quiet people to read 
or talk in peace. The effect of a rough sea on his 
nerves was to make them acutely sensitive to the 
loudness and vulgarity of typical ocean travellers. 
He was vexed by the selling of pools in the smok- 
ing-room (an ideally fitted smoking-room the 
Majestic had and one in which he would have 
loved to have settled down), with the cheap wit 
of the amateur auctioneer, backed by the poker 
players, who seemed to claim the best seats by 
right of gambling prescription, with the players 
in shirt sleeves, and those who had their coats on 
but talked Shirt-Sleevonic. The conversation 

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about him invariably turned on the "run," leading 
to a comparison of the respective merits of ocean 
steamers (always to the disadvantage of the one 
they happened to be on), complaints of food and 
service, violent standing up in partisan loyalty for 
the ship of preference, nearly leading to open quar- 
rels. This topic of conversation made way for 
talks on European travel, beginning with compas- 
sionate derogation of the arrangements for bag- 
gage and the absence of the check system ; the in- 
convenience of the railway carriages ; the compara- 
tive merits and faults of the large hotels in the 
various capitals, always, of course, measured by 
the standards of American hotels. All this was 
discussed with an emphatic intensity, sometimes 
even a passion, as if it concerned the honour of 
their immediate families. The highest intellectual 
flight which such conversation reached, and in 
which it nearly always culminated, consisted of 
crude, dogmatic generalisations on national char- 
acteristics and institutions of the several European 
countries, always with an implied or expressed 
final estimate from standards of equally puerile 
generalisation on America's nation and society. 

He prowled about like a wounded animal to find 
a place where he was free from the nauseous sav- 
agery of that fiercest of social animals who 



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"Was cast for the common or usual pig 
And has turned the invincible bore." 

With characteristic hastiness, under the influ- 
ence of his present experience, he felt serious mis- 
givings as to the rightness of the course he had 
cut out for himself. Was he really fitted for 
American business life? Would he not prove a 
failure ? 

George Van Zant was the second son of a 
wealthy merchant who, besides the valuable prop- 
erty he possessed in New York City, had founded 
the largest silk works in the Eastern States. 
This factory had been turned into a limited 
company a few years ago, when his father 
had retired from business. George's elder brother 
was the business manager there now; and 
after due deliberation, George himself had decided 
to join him as manufacturing manager and to 
make this his chief vocation in life. The step had 
been a deliberate one and had required, not only 
considerable thought and discussion, but also long 
and thorough preparation. The preliminary steps 
had now all been taken, and he was on his way 
to America to enter upon his serious duties. It 
meant an abrupt and radical change in the life 
to which he had been accustomed for the last ten 
years. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

His life had been a very full one ; full of sensa- 
tions and experiences of all kinds ; and his wander 
years, his period of "storm and stress," had been 
so literally, and had lasted a long time. When, at 
the age of twenty-three, he had graduated from 
Harvard and had left for Europe, his father had 
given him carte blanche to do what he pleased for 
ten years, and to decide upon his own walk of life, 
untrammelled by any material considerations or 
duties to his family. The only condition imposed 
was that, after ten years, he must settle down to 
some definite vocation, even if it were that of a 
professional gamekeeper. 

He had accordingly sailed for Europe well pro- 
vided with an expansive letter of credit, a packet 
of letters to a large and diversified number of 
prominent and interesting people in all the Euro- 
pean capitals, as well as an inexhaustible fund of 
emotional energy, an unquenchable thirst for new 
information and sensations, unbounded, yet unde- 
fined, aspirations — in which, however, the idealis- 
tic predominated — and a native self-control 
which, though pushed into the almost invisible 
background for shorter or longer periods, ulti- 
mately always gained the day and led him back to 
the paths of principle and sobriety, traditional or 
hereditary in his family and in the society in which 

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he was reared. The former outfit opened the doors 
of the "world" to him, the latter brought him face 
to face with the other spheres of society and kept 
him for the greater part of this period in the inter- 
national provinces of "Bohemia." 

After nearly two years spent in England, de- 
voted entirely to sports, in which he had excelled 
as an undergraduate, with much hunting and 
shooting and staying at country houses, and fwo 
seasons of gaieties in London, he turned his back 
on "society." With the same will and energy 
which he brought into sport and athletics, he 
turned to the study of painting in the Paris stu- 
dios and revelled in the society of the Latin Quarter, 
draining the cup of its half-fermented wine down 
to the very dregs and, as was but natural, fre- 
quently suffering, both physically and morally, in 
consequence from the after effects of such an un- 
healthy beverage. For four years, with a good 
deal of holiday travelling in between and occa- 
sional relapses into the "world," he remained 
hard at work in his Paris studios. Then suddenly 
he relinquished this vocation, though his fondness 
for art remained, and though he carried on his 
painting, now confined to landscapes, with the love 
and enjoyment of a real recreation. 

His friends were astonished at this sudden aban- 
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donment of the career of art ; for he had twice suc- 
ceeded in getting a picture into the salon, and he 
was well spoken of. But his desultory reading 
of general literature, more especially on philosoph- 
ical subjects and the works on social and econom- 
ical questions, with many a day's talk with 
thoughtful and even eminent men of letters and 
action, strengthened the serious and self -question- 
ing strain in him, and made him sooner or later 
pause and ask himself whether he had really 
found the right thing to do. At this somewhat ad- 
vanced stage in his artistic training he realised 
clearly that he would probably never succeed in 
being a truly great artist, and nothing less than 
this would satisfy him. 

At the same time his practical and active tem- 
perament made him flee from the purely theoret- 
ical life of a student. He desired to carry thought 
into life and to see the working of principles in 
flesh and blood among his fellow-beings. Accord- 
ingly he returned to London and threw himself 
with enthusiasm into work in the East End. He 
lived at Toynbee Hall and similar "missionary" 
institutions, mingled with the people, and gave 
up both his "Bohemian" and "worldly" habits. 

But, after nearly three more years of such work, 
he turned his back on it with thorough deliberation. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

Besides feeling grave doubts from a more theo- 
retical and ultimate view of their effects, politically, 
socially and economically, he doubted even of their 
immediate effectiveness, both as regards the deni- 
zens of the East End, as well as upon the enthu- 
siastic "missionaries" themselves, whether from 
the West or the West centre. To begin with, 
perhaps because he was an American, he did not 
believe that there really existed "classes" even in 
England — at least for purposes of definite action 
— based upon their more fixed and tangible dis- 
tinctness. Nor was it in any way desirable to 
make them fixed. The attempt to "bring them to- 
gether" often came dangerously near to confirm- 
ing, or even creating, the consciousness of their 
distinctness; while it really seemed to him a most 
fluctuating idea. In our unfeudal days "class" 
seemed to him to depend chiefly upon vocation in 
adult life and the preceding education. Changing 
these underlying causes of distinction would in- 
variably and forcibly change social tastes and 
forms. The attempt at changing such tastes and 
forms by themselves was likely to lead to insincer- 
ity, and was not conducive to happiness. The real 
changes, he put it epigrammatically, depended 
upon the schoolmaster and the employer. 

And as for the people who did this East End 
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work, though, as a temporary training, he thought 
it might do good to some who by nature, tradi- 
tion and habit were worldly and selfish, these were 
rarely the people who took to such work sincerely 
and deeply; while the others were often morally 
emasculated by its dangerously inebriating spirit 
of moral exaltation. He found that a large num- 
ber were deceived into self-indulgence and moral 
cowardice, in avoiding and shirking the sobriety 
and arduous discipline and self-repression of the 
established natural tasks, evolved by organised so- 
ciety in the normal centres into which they were 
born — study and systematic self-improvement, 
business, professional careers and home tasks. 

He turned his back upon the East End and wan- 
dered about the world. And now began the un- 
happiest period of his life : self-questioning, search 
after real tasks, with the vicious circle of decreased 
intellectual and moral vitality ; frequent periods of 
paralysis of the will, growing bluntness of interest 
and of the faculty of being pleased, nay, of inter- 
est in his fellow-men and — fellow-women. 

He had led a not "irreproachable" life in the 
past. He had had many a love-affair. But his 
views and principles had for some time been fixed, 
and he lived up to them. He was chiefly guided by 
what in this respect he called moral good taste and 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

cleanliness. Three times he had been on the verge 
of marriage; and though he did not regret that 
these serious attachments had come to nought, 
however much real distress he had experienced 
at the time, he did not purchase his peaceful retro- 
spect and congratulation at the expense of depre- 
ciating the character and charms of those who had 
thus once attracted him. He had lived through 
the scepticism concerning marriage as a social in- 
stitution and had been a temporary adherent to 
several wild theories to replace it. But he had 
now gained the firm conviction that, however 
faulty were the conventions surrounding the life 
of adults preceding marriage, or that of people de- 
termined to remain single, and however great the 
changes which would have to be introduced into 
the views and customs concerning these — mar- 
riage was still the noblest and best institution in- 
vented by the moral genius of man. Only he felt 
convinced that love in its full and most varied mean- 
ings was essential to it; but of equal importance 
was the consensus of well-balanced judgment and 
thought to confirm the divine and highest instincts 
of the world. He had a pet phrase for any inti- 
mate friend who upbraided him upon his bachelor- 
hood : "I cannot marry with my head alone, and 
I dare not marry with my heart alone." 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

He was essentially not unreligious, but was de- 
cidedly unsectarian. 

Even with this mature development in his soul's 
growth and the general decision it gave to his 
views of life, he could not escape from the misery 
of the restless and still inactive interval after he 
had given up the East End. It marked the end 
of his Lehr and Wander-jahre and he was work- 
ing into his Meister-jahre. And this transition is 
always fraught with self-torture or with melan- 
choly for serious natures. 

Fortunately he was not left to fight it all out 
by himself, and in himself. Help came from with- 
out and from a most natural quarter, nearest to 
him — from his father. He had been with his par- 
ents at a watering-place in Germany two years ago, 
and, without in any way commenting upon his 
unsatisfactory condition, which his mother had 
at once detected, or the approach of the ultimate 
period for the choice of a vocation, his father be- 
gan to lay before him the state of business and the 
opening there was there for him. 

Though the silk works were now in the hands of 
a stock company, his father and his family held 
the chief interest in the business, and they were 
dissatisfied with its working, owing to deficient 
management. The business department was well 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

looked after under the efficient control of George's 
elder brother; the technical and manufacturing 
department was lagging behind the times and was 
wanting in intelligent management, notably in the 
infusion of taste in the department of designing. 

Like a flash of inspiration George saw "the 
thing to do for his hand" and he at once deter- 
mined to "do it with his might." 

He said nothing to his father that day ; but the 
next day he laid before him the plan he had set- 
tled upon, and he had the pleasure of witnessing 
the joyful and grateful elation of his habitually 
undemonstrative parent. 

This plan he carried out religiously. He went 
for two years to the "Weavers' College" at Chem- 
nitz in Saxony; and while there he read a good 
deal on decorative art and collected a valuable 
library on this interesting topic. He made himself 
master of the whole art of weaving. Then he spent 
some time at Lyons, Crefeld and Macclesfield, in- 
specting and examining, as far as he was able to 
do this, after candidly stating his aims and pur- 
pose to the owners of the factories, the large silk 
works of these centres of industry. 

He now looked at his duties with clearness and 
sobriety, though without relinquishing the higher 
ideals of life even as a manufacturer. He knew 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

that the first and immediate aim was to make the 
business pay, and therefore to supply the existing 
demand as cheaply as possible. To do this he 
hoped to introduce some modern technical im- 
provements. But at the same time his artistic 
taste and attainments were to stand him in good 
stead in improving the quality and standard of 
designs; and he fondly hoped that he could also 
effect and modify the demand by the artistic de- 
signs which he would make for silk-weaving. And 
finally he cherished the fond hope that, without 
manifest patronage or interference, he would be 
able to affect the moral and physical welfare of 
their numerous factory hands, to lead them, in 
joining them, in amusement and education. 

He was now enjoying a secure and settled hap- 
piness of soul compared with which the wild de- 
light of his Latin Quarter days was almost like 
pain. 

With the thought of the new life he was to lead, 
came the thought of the people he would have to 
associate with, and the danger which came from 
his fastidiousness in this respect. Mrs. Sandeman 
had delicately given him to understand that he had 
been judging the Beeks too summarily, and was 
not treating them considerately. As a matter of 
fact, Mr. Sandeman had told his wife that "that 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

young man will never get on In America if he 
treats all people as he treats Mr. Beek." 

So now he determined to follow their repeated 
invitation and to call on the Beeks in their sump- 
tuous private sitting-room. 

He found the whole family enjoying perfect 
immunity from seasickness. The father and 
mother were playing at piquet, the girls were list- 
lessly reading novels. All seemed relieved and 
well pleased with the visit of the young man. 
There was a heartiness in their greeting and a 
homelike atmosphere even in this ship's cabin, to 
which perhaps the previous musings of the young 
man made him sensible. His own manner, too, 
was warmer and free from constraint, and so he 
drew an amiable response to his own pleased ad- 
vances. 

His hour's visit showed him the robust business 
man in a much softer and an almost beautiful 
light, as the affectionate and considerate husband 
and the absolutely devoted father, like soft clay 
in the hands of his two girls. These girls too were 
good, simple, healthy creatures, with a fund of 
common sense, high spirits and decided humour. 
He thought that a very short training, a life amid 
other associations with the realisation of refined 
interests, would fit them for many a brilliant circle. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

But he rightly concluded that, by nature and train- 
ing, they were best suited to be the admirable wives 
of active men of business and the mothers of 
healthy and law-abiding citizens, in homes where 
comfort and affluence helped their kind hearts to 
dispense warm and cheery hospitality. 

As he walked to and fro on deck after he had 
left them, in spite of the rough windy weather, he 
felt cheered by the fresh air, and his thoughts re- 
verted, as by contrast, to the girl whom he 
had saved from falling the previous evening. She 
was certainly a different type, a beautiful girl! 
He wondered who she was. He must get to know 
her. And she occupied his thoughts while he 
walked to and fro for some time after. 



89 



CHAPTER VIII 

ON the third day of their voyage from Queens- 
town the dirty weather had cleared off; and 
though in the morning the ship was still rolling 
considerably, the wind had abated, the sky was 
brighter, and there was every promise of a warm 
and cheery day. 

Even at an early hour several ladies who 
had reappeared on deck were seated in their 
steamer chairs, which were lashed to the handrail 
along the deck-cabins. Ruth, though she 
could barely drink a cup of tea and felt faint and 
drowsy, was helped up on deck by the stewardess, 
placed comfortably in her chair, and wrapped 
up in her rugs. As she lay there, refreshed by the 
breeze fanning and bathing her face with cooling 
caresses, half asleep, with her eyes closed, she felt 
her strength and activity return rapidly with every 
minute. She enjoyed the strange languor which 
held her whole body in will-less surrender, and 
was almost displeased to feel the pulse of life and 
action gradually assert itself. 

George Van Zant found her lying thus stretched 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

out, apparently in peaceful slumber, as he passed. 
There was a sculpturesque repose in her pale face, 
with the closed, beautifully chiselled eyelids, and 
an expression of painless suffering, or rather, as if 
pain had passed gently and had gently touched 
her brow as with silent wing it had flown by. 
There was a poetic tone to the mood which the 
sight of her face evoked, but chiefly one which 
called upon pity and all the strong tenderness of 
the true man in him. 

He wanted to turn back at once to have another 
look; but there was something which checked 
him, a feeling of delicacy to her, and, perhaps, an 
unconscious sense of foresight and caution which 
had taught him that the most delicate and noble 
sensations must not be robbed of a certain mys- 
tery and coarsened by too much clearness and 
repetition. So he continued his walk on the other 
side of the deck for a considerable time, dwelling 
upon the sweet image which his eyes had just per- 
ceived and giving himself up to a sentiment, nay, 
a sentimentality, which he had not experienced 
for a long time. 

The passengers now appeared on deck in 
greater numbers, and a more active movement 
and chatter dispelled his contemplative mood, fa- 
voured before by the stillness and emptiness of the 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

deck. The dreams left him, and he now ventured 
to go to the lee side, where most of the prom- 
enaders — nearly all men — were walking. 

As he approached Ruth, he saw that her eyes 
were still closed and that she was still slumbering, 
and the same manly tenderness again began to 
steal over him. But suddenly, as his eyes left her 
face, there was an abrupt change in his mood. 

The wind, and perhaps a change of position on 
her part as she was sleeping, had caused the rugs 
to unfold from her feet, and a sudden gust must 
have flapped the lower end over the one side ; her 
dress had tucked up, and, as she lay there helpless, 
she displayed a good deal of black silk stocking, 
tightly fitting in foldless smoothness a beauti- 
fully shaped ankle. 

When the young man had passed her, a strange 
sense of uneasiness, a trouble came over him, out 
of all proportion to the trifling nature of the in- 
cident. No doubt, in sympathy with the girl, he 
felt something of the shame which his own dis- 
turbed feelings would have evoked in her, had 
she known of them. And when he heard two 
smoking-room men (one of them the witty pool- 
auctioneer) chuckling behind him, make a broad 
remark of commendation, and halting, he caught 
the expression on their amused faces, he wheeled 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

round and walked quickly to the chair of the girl, 
and very gently and silently pulled her dress over 
her ankles and wrapped the rugs round her feet 
with caution. Though he avoided looking up at 
her face, a rapid glance at her before he left hast- 
ily, though noiselessly, reassured him that she had 
not wakened out of her slumber. 

As a matter of fact Ruth had not been asleep all 
the time she had been on deck, but she could not 
open her eyes. Once or twice she had drawn her 
lids up the least bit, and had seen Van Zant pass 
the first time. She was enjoying that will-less, 
listless fatigue which those know who have re- 
covered from a severe illness, and she could not, 
even if she had so willed, shake off this lethargy. 
She thought her rugs had become disarranged, and 
felt a coolness about her ankles, and her uneasiness 
began to interfere with the delicious mood which 
held her. If only she could find enough energy 
to lean forward and pull the rugs over her feet, 
with which she could have held them down. But 
she seemed powerless. If only the stewardess 
would come! She had promised to look after her 
at intervals. She thought of begging some passer- 
by to send for her, but she could not bring herself 
to do even this. Her eyes remained closed, and 
the upper part of her body refused to move for- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ward. Besides, the stewardess would surely come 
every moment! Just then she thought she heard 
the laugh of the two men and vaguely felt she 
might be the cause of it. And then she felt 
her dress being gently, gently pulled down and 
her rugs being arranged under her feet. She 
opened her lids slightly and saw Van Zant with 
set and unmoved, even stern features, as he bent 
down over her feet. 

A thrill shot through her whole body, and as he 
moved away silently there was a conflict of various 
emotions in her heart: shame welling over into 
gratitude, irritation and anger with herself and 
against those who may have laughed at her, dis- 
solving into a joyous outpouring of her soul to 
this stranger. There was no depth or deliberation 
in it ; but it was as if she had sat with a girl friend 
and had seen a man do what she liked most and she 
had said: "I like that man." 

Her eyes were now wide open and the lethargy- 
left her, and gradually her normal energy re- 
turned. 

Van Zant sat at the stern watching the waves 
churned up by the screws, dreaming for nearly an 
hour. He hardly perceived how the waves over the 
sea grew smaller and smaller until the ship 
steamed along in perfectly smooth water. It was 

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the bright sun shining on his head which made 
him seek shelter under the awnings, which had 
meanwhile been spread over the deck, and then 
he found and realised in himself that it was 
luncheon time. 

As by magic the ship, which had appeared al- 
most deserted on the previous day, awoke to a 
scene of life and bustle, when, with perfectly 
smooth sea and delicious weather, nearly every 
passenger left the cabin for the deck during the 
afternoon. The steamer chairs were crowded to- 
gether side by side on every available space, and 
the passage way for the promenaders was often 
impeded. 

Van Zant was threading his way through this 
labyrinth of chairs, looking for Mrs. Sandeman, 
when he perceived her beckoning to him at some 
distance; and, approaching her, saw Ruth sitting 
beside her. 

The elder lady at once presented him to Miss 
Ruth Ward of Boston. 

"Just fancy!" said Mrs. Sandeman, "Miss 
Ward and I ought to be old friends. I knew her 
mother, Grace Forbes, before she married." 

And she told him that she knew all about her 
family in Boston, that Ruth had been studying 
art in Paris for the last two years, and was now 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

on her way home to visit her parents for a few 
months. Ruth's face gained a new life of varied 
expression when animated in conversation; there 
was a brightness in the eye and a mobility about 
the mouth, with its pearly white teeth, which caused 
all the traces of wornness, which Van Zant had 
noticed in the railway carriage, to vanish com- 
pletely. Her voice was soft and clear, with a 
Bostonian precision of enunciation which harmo- 
nised with the refined and correct choice of words, 
testifying to lettered traditions in her surround- 
ings. 

To Van Zant the touchstone showing in people 
cultivated surroundings was the variety and nicety 
of adjectives and adverbs they used, especially 
those of commendation or disapproval. The nar- 
rowness of thought, and often of feeling, were in- 
dicated by the subjective limitation of such ad- 
jectives. The least developed minds in this re- 
spect merely knew of "nice" and "nasty" ; others 
had a greater variety, but the same term had to 
do service to cover a multitude of attributes in the 
objects. The only purpose which seemed to ac- 
tuate the speaker in his selection, was the expres- 
sion of his own approval or dissent, and words to 
him were only synibolical of personal emotions. 

.What pleased him most in Ruth was her 
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"WHAT MAY WE READ? 

deferential and reservedly affectionate manner 
to the elder lady. He could see at once that they 
liked each other. And he liked them both — • 
much. 

When he had talked to them for some time, 
standing before them, and was just thinking that 
he ought now to leave, Mrs. Sandeman rose 
from her chair, and begged him to occupy it for 
her, while she looked after Mr. Sandeman, whom 
she had promised to join in their cabin. 

And now a strange thing happened to Ruth. 
The moment the gentle and kind old lady 
had spoken to her and the few words exchanged 
had led to an immediate mutual understanding, 
and the drawing of their chairs together, so that 
they at once glided into the familiar talk in which 
Van Zant found them engaged, Ruth knew that 
she would soon make the acquaintance of this man, 
who had stirred her nature to its very depths. 
While she was conversing with Mrs. Sandeman 
she arranged in her mind with some deliberate- 
ness the kind of things she would like to say 
without in any way allowing him to become 
aware of her previous notice of him. In fact, she 
determined not to allude to their railway journey 
from London. Her natural desire was to meet 
him with unfeigned affability, but with the main- 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

tenance of proper reserve and all the dignity she 
possessed. 

The moment Mrs. Sandeman had left them, 
however, an awkward pause ensued, which grew 
uncomfortable from its length; and then it was 
that her whole manner seemed to change against 
her will. With a tone and expression of archness, 
not at all characteristic of her, in fact, quite for- 
eign to her, she turned to him, and, with a smile 
of quizzing enquiry in her eyes, she said : 

"I have an impertinent question to ask you, Mr. 
Van Zant. Don't answer if you don't want to." 

"You could ask no question, I am sure, which 
I should not be well pleased to answer." 

The pleasant and candid, yet serious, manner of 
the young man, made her draw back for a moment. 
Her own instincts, her whole nature, were entirely 
opposed to what she was saying, and his manner 
to her would make the tone of her question almost 
grotesquely incongruous. But perhaps this very 
incongruity seemed to urge her on and caused her 
to override the resisting impulse of her own na- 
ture, and, with manifestly forced calm and levity 
she said: 

"What was the book you threw into the sea?" 

The moment she had uttered this, her senses 
seemed morbidly alive to every impression. She 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

saw him start as if he had been stung. He looked 
away for a breathing space or two, as if he were 
considering what the book was, and then he turned 
upon her, and looked her full in the eyes, while his 
altered tone was that of familiar badinage and 
jesting patronage: 

"My dear young lady, I cannot risk telling you 
that yet, there are too many people about to tell 
you my secrets. I also know you are a bad sailor, 
and have but just recovered from that horrible 
disease. That book nearly made me seasick." 

The colour left Ruth's face under the eyes of 
Van Zant ; she looked petrified. As his eyes were 
fixed on hers she seemed unable to avoid his stare. 
He saw her paleness grow and he feared she would 
faint. 

Ruth in her weak state did feel faint. When she 
had uttered the words and when his gaze turned 
towards her, she felt a glow of shame thrill 
through her whole frame with anger at herself 
and at him ; this was rapidly followed by a trance- 
like weakness in which the sensation she had ex- 
perienced on that horrible evening in Paris re- 
turned; yet there was no disgust and revulsion 
against the man as there had then been — only in- 
sufferable disgust with herself; and then she felt 
quite faint. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

Neither of them could have told how long this 
lasted. But with an effort of will she shook off 
the numbness which kept her paralysed in speech, 
and in a halting voice, beneath which tears were 
audible, she said : 

"I don't know why or how I could have said 
that. It was against my will. Please forget it." 

Van Zant at once looked away, and another 
pause ensued, the length of which they could not 
estimate. He was even more angry with himself 
than she was. He had made the gravest mistake. 
He knew nothing about the girl before, and her 
remark had made a sudden thought flash through 
his brain, summarising his early experiences in 
some American watering place under the term 
"summer-girl," But if this flashed through his 
brain, his heart, his feelings really gave him an 
absolutely different estimate of her. How could 
he have made such a coarse mistake, and where 
were all his tact, his judgment, and his refined 
chivalry ? He felt as strongly indignant with him- 
self as if he had struck a woman or a child. 

When at last, after the long silence, he looked 
up at her, his eyes were full of appealing respect 
and tenderness and his voice conveyed pleading 
and deferential solicitude, as he said : 

*'I am sure, Miss Ward, you must be v/eak and 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

tired. The sea air is rather too bracing at first. 
You ought to rest in your cabin a little longer and 
then try to eat something. Let me help you be- 
low." 

And he removed her rugs very gently and 
helped her out of her chair, put her arm in his, 
and led her, faint as she was, along the deck and 
down to the saloon, taking off his cap respectfully 
as he left her. 

Ruth had not uttered a word while he led her, 
but she again felt a thrill of gratitude welling out 
towards him as she leaned on his arm. 

When she arrived in her cabin she sank on her 
berth and burst into tears. 



101 



CHAPTER IX 

RUTH did not appear again that day. Van 
Zant heard from Mrs. Sandeman that she 
had coaxed her into their private room cabin, 
where she was looking after her and nursing her 
back to normal health. She could not say enough 
of the sweetness and refined good breeding of the 
girl. The old lady's enthusiasm was the stronger 
from the habitual reserve of her manner and mod- 
eration in expression. In the evening she in- 
formed their party that she had won a victory in 
having persuaded the young lady to join their 
table, and turning to Mrs. Beek, she said with 
humorous exultation : "I, too, shall have a daugh- 
ter with me now." And thus the next day Van 
Zant found himself placed at luncheon between 
the elder Miss Beek and Ruth, who sat next to 
Mrs. Sandeman. 

Though most of her remarks were addressed to 
the old lady, who really treated her like a favourite 
daughter, Ruth did not neglect the other members 
of the party. She addressed herself frequently to 
Mrs. Beek, the young ladies and the two older 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

men. All these, without exception, she had en- 
tirely captivated, and all manifested their submis- 
sion in their several manners. The young ladies, 
when she had left, were gushingly enthusiastic 
about her, the mother considered her a well-be- 
haved, ladylike, superior girl, and ]\Ir. Beek called 
her a woman of sense who did not put on any 
airs. But in the whole company one effect was 
manifest — that they were impressed with a strong 
feeling of genuine respect. In fact, though there 
was no discomfort or gene in the tone of the party, 
an approach to loudness and boisterousness which 
had occasionally made itself felt at table, subsided 
entirely, and this effect was especially noticeable 
in Mr. Beek, who no longer drifted into making 
his important and successful self the forefront and 
centre of the party, but seemed quite naturally 
to take the place proper to him in all but a meeting 
of the Managing Directors of his railways. 

It really was a strange fact that a simple and 
modest young girl should have produced an effect 
which neither the superior business capacity and 
dignity of character in Mr. Sandeman nor the pol- 
ished strength and refinement of Van Zant could 
attain. 

But her manner to Van Zant was essentially 
different from what it was to any of the others, 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

however much she tried not to make any distinc- 
tion. There was no embarrassment left, especially 
as his treatment of her was full of gentle consider- 
ation and kindness. But there was a warmer glow 
concealed beneath all her dealings with him, a cer- 
tain deference, hidden, but there all the same. 
Above all, there was between them the unpro- 
nounced freemasonry of common education, ex- 
periences and interests, which naturally drew them 
to one another more than to the other members of 
the party and made them understand each other 
more readily and more fully. Many a remark 
either of them made to all the party was really 
meant for the one person alone, and, without ac- 
knowledging it to each other or to themselves, 
they each felt it. With the return of health and 
high spirits to Ruth, a few walks on deck with 
Van Zant in the afternoon and in the evening — 
when they both were pleased to find that they 
could perceive the sublimity in a great machine 
of progress, like one of these Atlantic liners, seen 
on deck in the moonlight — the identification of a 
few common friends in their homes, there soon 
was a real tone of fresh, pleasant and warm 
comradeship between them. 

However, in spite of her artistic life and train- 
ing, Ruth Ward was a New England woman. 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

She could not live things out, she had first to 
think them out. And so, when the next morning 
they had arranged their chairs in a secluded nook, 
with rugs and books, and a suggestion of perma- 
nent settlement, she said to Van Zant in a straight- 
forward and unembarrassed tone : 

"If you are not bent upon reading, I should like 
to talk over a subject with you about which I have 
been puzzling a good deal and have fancied I had 
made up my mind. Perhaps you could even help 
me over some doubts I have been feeling lately." 

"I should certainly prefer a talk with you to 
reading," the young man answered without a 
trace of compliment. "What is the subject?" 

She was evidently struggling to put her question 
clearly, and then she said : 

"Don't you think that one ought, no, I mean 
that one may read everything?" In spite of her de- 
liberateness there was a slight tremor in her voice 
and a remote trace of embarrassment beneath her 
directness. 

The simple and unmoved tone in which he an- 
swered must needs have reassured her, as he said : 

"No, I distinctly and emphatically do not think 
so. We neither ought nor need. Of course ..." 

"I ought to tell you at once," she interrupted 
him with some eagerness, "that I have been 
105 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

brought up to think that there is no need of restric- 
tion, and that I have confirmed my views on this 
since I have thought and acted for myself." 

"Well," he said, "I do not want to gain unfair 
impressiveness for my opinions when I tell you 
that I have thought much on this subject and that 
I formerly held your views and have always prac- 
tised complete independence of choice. But I have 
changed my mind, and I now feel quite satisfied on 
the question. I decidedly think that it is not good 
for us to read anything and everything." 

"But how are you going to decide what is 'good 
for us ?' " she asked. And now the impersonal 
interest of the talk had already taken hold of her, 
and they both seemed to plunge into the depths of 
the problem with a concentration that precluded 
all levity. "Is the parson or the doctor or the 
moralist or the artist himself to decide this ?" she 
continued. 

"Perhaps each of them or all of them together," 
he replied. "But we are just trying to decide this 
for ourselves; and to find the truth we need not 
subdivide our minds by fixed professional views, 
or join some clan of thought, or — call each other 
names. By 'good for us' I don't mean only morally 
good, but also sssthetically good — what is good 
for our taste." 

io6 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"Are they distinct?" she asked. 

"Ultimately, certainly not. Perhaps they are 
even more closely and inseparably interwoven 
than people admit. But surely you know what I 
mean when I make the distinction. Practically, 
morality and good taste ..." 

"Oh ! I do know," she put in hastily, "you need 
not trouble about that." 

"Well," he continued, and he pondered for a 
minute before he proceeded, "what I chiefly mean 
is that the accent in the 'good for us' is to be put 
on the 'good for us.' " 

"I don't quite see what you mean. You must 
not talk in riddles," she said, after leaning forward 
and trying to follow his phrase. 

"What I mean is quite simple. It depends 
upon who reads a book or experiences an event, 
and upon how or in what attitude of mind, we ap- 
proach them." 

"You would carefully select books pour Ics 
jeunes Ulles, would you?" she asked, with a pro- 
testing irony in her voice. 

"Yes, I should," he answered with an amused 
twinkle. "I should even clap blinkers to your eyes 
like a shot if I thought you were given to shying," 
and he laughed at her. And then he continued 
seriously : "It is not easy to determine the nature 
107 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and fitness of the person who is to read, and there 
are curious distinctions to make here. For in- 
stance, a very young and innocent girl may, in one 
respect, stand on the same platform with a blase 
o\d rotte and man of the world who has seen all 
that is to be seen of life." 

"You evidently like paradoxes," Ruth said, 
and there was a trace of irritation in her voice. 

"No," he answered, "I mean it quite seriously. 
A young and quite innocent girl reads certain 
things with her eyes, and perhaps her brain only, 
and so does the man of the world. But those 
in between read emotionally, with their hearts and 
feelings ; their reading may enter into their whole 
system, course through them with the pulsation 
of their hearts and permanently affect their vital 
organs, their character, their taste — their whole 
life." 

"And is it an advantage to read without feel- 
ing?" 

"It decidedly is an advantage not to read cer- 
tain things emotionally and to be affected by 
them," he replied. "Take medical books, for in- 
stance ..." 

"But we were talking art, general literature, and 
you are now adducing science — of course there is 
a difference ..." 

io8 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"But that is just what I am driving at, the 
fundamental distinction between the scientific view 
of . . ." 

"I beg your pardon," she said with some contri- 
tion. 

"The medical man reads a medical book intel- 
lectually, with his brain, with his 'upper conscious- 
ness' only, he is fascinated by and concentrated 
upon the cognitive interest, what there is to 
knozv; the layman, reading the same book, is at- 
tracted or repelled, is fascinated or shocked, is 
pleased with the satisfaction of a morbid curiosity 
and at the same time nervously disturbed by the 
facts brought before him, his imagination trans- 
lates it all into life, into his own life." 

"He suffers all the illnesses he reads of and be- 
comes hypochondriacal," she put in. 

"Exactly," he said eagerly. "Because it is all 
personal to him, because it becomes an emotional 
experience. It does not only remain in his upper 
consciousness, it directly stimulates his imagina- 
tion, through his sensations and emotions, and has 
become in so far part of his life and character. To 
become diseased is not necessarily the most de- 
sirable state, is it?" 

"You need not strike me with a sledge hammer. 
I grant the undesirability of cultivating disease in 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

one's self ; but need one, in facing a work of art or 
literature, be affected so immediately in that way ? 
Can't one leave certain things in one's 'upper con- 
sciousness' as you call it?" 

"No, not in so far as it is distinctively a work 
of art," Van Zant replied with decision. "A work 
of science appeals directly and chiefly to our un- 
derstanding, to our intellect, and it may or may not 
subsequently stimulate our imagination and emo- 
tions; a work of art appeals immediately and 
above all to our emotions and our sympathies, 
though it may stimulate our intellect and make us 
think clearly for a long time." 

"Well, may it not be a good thing to make us 
think in this way, and are there not thoughts 
worth thinking which we ought to be forced to 
think out, thoughts, moreover, that can only be 
conveyed through art or can best be conveyed 
through it?" 

Ruth uttered these words with fervent earnest- 
ness, and there was a certain triumph in her voice 
and manner as she faced her adversary with this 
thrust. 

There was a pause, during which the young man 
gazed upon her with a look of curious surprise and 
admiration. Then he stared straight before him 
with a searching look as he said : 

no 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

*'Ah! you have indeed touched the real prob- 
lem, one which it is almost impossible to decide 
in general terms. I was wrong in affirming my 
point so dogmatically, and I hark back. It is all 
a question of proportion in each case, of means 
and ends. But remember, I started with the 
phrase 'good for us' and maintained that it de- 
pended upon the reader and his attitude of mind 
whether a book would do him good or harm. To 
be more definite, let me give you my personal ex- 
perience. I have talked over a book like the 
'Kreutzer-Sonata,' by Tolstoy, with men and with 
some older women-friends without any discom- 
fort ; but I have felt extremely uncomfortable and 
did not like them for it, when young unmarried 
women began to mention it. The book, by 
a great master, has an extremely moral aim in 
the mind of the author — though I think 
its very 'purpose' a fundamental error. Yet, apart 
from the misguiding effect of its theory, the fact 
that manifest common knowledge of it with a young 
lady belonging to the society in which we live 
makes me uncomfortable, must mean something." 

"That may only be peculiar to you and your, 
perhaps, mistaken attitude towards these young 
ladies — you may not know the inner life of these 
girls," Ruth said in a combative tone. 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"Very well, I will admit it and drop it. Then I 
will only speak of myself, and of the inner experi- 
ences of that person I have some knowledge. I 
have not only read a large number of books that 
young women have not read, but I have also lived 
a life that young ladies never lead. This latter 
fact may have blunted my senses. At all events, it 
has made it difficult for me to be shocked ; and I 
read a great deal with my 'upper consciousness,' 
which would rouse strong feelings of attraction 
and revulsion — generally the latter — in most peo- 
ple. I have often been surprised to have my man- 
friends point to 'strong' passages in a work 
I have read, the 'strength' of which had entirely 
escaped me in the interest with which I dwelt upon 
the story and style, and the purely matter-of-fact, 
almost scientific, attitude of mind with regard 
to such 'strong' things. It has also happened to 
me to be remonstrated with by some older 
woman-friend for having mentioned, or even 
recommended, a book to young ladies the 
'bold' character of which I had innocently over- 
seen. Now, for instance, there is an author 
whom I admire greatly, and I read all his 
works . 

He hesitated a moment, as if he were balancing 
in his mind whether he was to say something or 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

not, and then he evidently decided not to do it, 
and continued : 

"He is considered by the world, and considers 
himself, the ultra-realist. Well, I admire him 
chiefly as a powerful story-teller of the old- 
fashioned order, and his 'realism' does not move 
me one way or the other if the interest of his 
story is sufficiently strong. But, occasionally, the 
consciousness of his opposition to the 'Philistines' 
and of his 'literary mission' — I hope no baser con- 
sideration — lead him to drag in a realistic and 
strong situation and say things so brutal and filthy 
that they shock and disgust me, and I cannot stand 
it. There are many authors, often with remarkable 
power of composition and style, who deal with 
morbid phases of life and taste which I feel it is 
not good for my imagination to dwell on if I 
wish to remain a healthy man — a man in the full 
sense of the term, I mean, not a saint." 

"But would you prune away important shoots 
from the tree of life because your refined tastes 
are based upon the flower-garden only?" she pro- 
tested. 

"It is not because I want flowers only, but be- 
cause I don't want rotten fruit," he rejoined. 

"But, surely, the Bible, Shakespeare, all great 
standard works mention things bluntly and 
113 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

Strongly that would shock the sensibilities of re- 
fined people if they took them by themselves and in 
the wrong spirit. Are your nerves as weak as all 
that?" she insisted, with some vehemence. 

"You mistake the kind of thing I am objecting 
to," he maintained on his part with energy, and 
his tone grew warmer, more aggressive. "I do not 
object to the straightforward, even the brutal men- 
tion of things that are objectionable in life and 
that are clearly, or by clear implication, meant as 
such. There is a good deal of mistaken purism 
and pruriency in this respect, when people object 
to books or passages in them because they are 
plain-spoken though really strong and pure. I am 
referring to the things that are not brutal, but 
decidedly morbid ; and here again the evil lies in 
the artistic vitalisation, the dramatic treatment 
which they receive at the hands of the writer." 

"I really cannot follow you," Ruth said, after 
she had listened to him with searching attention. 

"I know I am not clear," he continued with real 
humility ; "but it is not easy to put the distinction 
clearly. The mere mention of a thing, the plain 
reference to what is objectionable, appeals to our 
minds in the same way as a scientific statement. 
A veiled suggestion already goes further in ap- 
pealing to our imagination and emotion, it is 

114 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

more artistic, and therefore also more effective 
upon our emotional life. But when morbid and 
objectionable facts in life are imbued by the 
author with the life of dramatic action, when the 
scenes and situations appeal to our imagination 
and our sympathy, when we live through all the 
stages of objectionable life, are moved by the same 
feelings, stirred by the same passions, affected in 
the wholeness of our nature by what is admitted 
in life to be perverse or — even 'unnatural,' — then 
we come out of such 'artistic' experiences different 
from what we were before." 

There was a pause, during which Ruth sat per- 
fectly still, her arm on her knee and her chin rest- 
ing in her hand, and then she said without moving. 

"I see what you mean now. There is in- 
deed a distinction. But why should we allow it 
to be harmful ? Ought we not to know what the 
sinner felt in order to forgive him and pity 
him?" 

"Perhaps," he answered. "Meanwhile consider 
the cost of it. I'll tell you why it is harmful. The 
more we are moved, the more we are emotional, 
the more we feel — I mean the less we are purely 
intellectual, conscious and thinking — the further 
removed are we from the control of our will. The 
more rudimentary and powerful our feelings and 
115 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

emotions are, the less are they subject to our will 
and reason — the more are they affected by associa- 
tion and habit. Certain scents, certain tastes, af- 
fect us in a distinct way and evoke definite asso- 
ciations in our mind, whatever our will or our 
reason wish us to feel. Our emotional life is a very 
delicate machine, and is subject to the most as- 
tonishing- changes through habit and the associa- 
tions about us. In the lighter spheres I would but 
remind you of the slavish following of fashions in 
dress, which our canons of art and our reason op- 
pose, and we still come to like and admire; and 
in the weightier spheres — well — let me tell you, 
that there were customs mentioned in biblical life 
as in conformity with that stage of civilisation 
which run counter to the fundamental views of 
modern society. Let me tell you," and he went on 
hurriedly, "that one of the greatest works of art 
the world has seen, one of the seven wonders, at 
which the four greatest sculptors of the age 
worked in artistic concert, stirred to artistic devo- 
tion by a cultured and high-minded woman, was 
the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, erected by Ar- 
temisia in memory of the great King Mausolus, 
her husband and — her brother." 

He stopped abruptly, and there was absolute 
silence for a minute ; and then he continued : 

ii6 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"See by what delicate threads of association and 
habit, by what golden films, the dearest and deep- 
est, the most fundamental ideas which hold to- 
gether the moral fabric of our civilised life, hang; 
remember the power of association, of the direc- 
tion given to our imagination in our emotional life, 
upon which our character depends, and you will 
understand how, even I — with the miserable, sul- 
lied soul of an ordinary man, feel the danger of 
dwelling in morbid atmospheres, why I should 
deeply deplore the publicity given by the press to 
aberrations and misfortunes which are only to be 
met in the spirit in which kind physicians deal with 
diseases. ..." 

He again checked himself, and this time he felt 
that his dialectic and enquiring ardour was carry- 
ing him too far, and he broke off for good. 

During the long silence which followed, Ruth 
sat deeply moved. And then, with a sigh, she 
shook off the thoughts that were evidently dis- 
tressing her, and said in a pained and pleading 
voice : 

"But what are we poor artists, what is the 
novelist to do, if he does not take Truth as his 
supreme and safest guide? How can he work if 
he considers all you say and the grave responsibili- 
ties you put upon him ?" 

"7 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"Of course, I don't want the author to stunt his 
creativeness in thinking of all this while he is 
writing: but I should like the man, who precedes 
the author, out of whom the author grows, to have 
felt it. Above all, I don't want the author to 
think of it in his protest against prudishness — 
which affects the spontaneity of his work as much 
as does the intrusion of a moral purpose — and I 
do not believe in making a school which specialises 
on the lower aspects of life." 

"Neither the one nor the other," Ruth put in. 
And then, looking up, her eyes fixed in the dis- 
tance, she sat with her hands folded pursuing her 
thoughts, while Van Zant watched her in silence. 
"Well," she resumed, as if summing up her 
thoughts aloud, "I can guite see what some of the 
prudish moralists would make of Shakespeare's 
subjects if they got hold of them. But it has just 
flashed through my mind that I have seen 'Ham- 
let' from my childhood upwards ; and though I un- 
derstood every scene, I never dwelt in my mind 
upon the horror of the events which threw Hamlet 
into that tragic situation. It is his figure and his 
inner and outer struggles that at once, and almost 
exclusively, engross the attention and evoke sym- 
pathy — and the rest goes to the background. It 
occurs to me," and her eyes, before widely open, 

ii8 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

closed partially with a concentrated look of thought, 
**that if one of the modern 'realists,' whom you 
disagree with, had before him that story from the 
court of Denmark, he would probably have dwelt 
and enlarged upon the part preceding Hamlet's 
melancholy — the tragedy of his father's life and 
death in all its details — and would have made that 
the central point of the tragedy. Does not that 
illustrate what you mean when you say that it is 
the man behind the artist?" 

The effect of her words upon Van Zant was 
deep. "May I be personal for once, Miss Ward ?" 
he asked humbly. "There is nothing I love more 
in an argument than to have my so-called op- 
ponent help me with the best point in my favour, 
and recognise that a conversation is never a law- 
suit, but a combined effort to solve a problem and 
to gain light. Your instance has helped me to 
understand what I am aiming at more than any- 
thing I could have said. In the hands of a Shake- 
speare, whose great art never smothers his great 
humanity — nay is fed by and feeds it — the tragic 
events preceding the action in the play lend their 
awful pathos and big misery to increase the tragic 
element in the personality of Hamlet. They are thus 
freed from their inherent repulsive horror; they 
also are made tragic. We know the facts clearly ; 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

but we recognise them through our 'upper con- 
sciousness' ; we are not forced to Hve through them 
emotionally in all their sordid and lowering details ; 
they are merged in the personality of Hamlet — the 
artistic centre to the living tragedy — and in him 
we live through a tragic life, purified and ennobled 
in us by fear and pity. And remember we live 
through that life emotionally (not with our 'upper 
consciousness' only) ; and we are not only widened 
m our sympathies, but deepened and strengthened 
in our feelings and elevated in our thought by a 
true work of art. Even the ancient Greeks — the 
artists who were most purely artistic — realised 
this, in theory with Aristotle, and in practice with 
nearly all their great dramatists : The Agamem- 
non begins with the return of the husband, the 
stories of QEdipus, of Phaedra, of Electra, all fol- 
low the same course. It is, as you say, our mod- 
ern misguided realist who would force us, by all 
the art or tricks of his craft, to live through the 
sordid details of the immoral situation — not with 
our minds only, but with our heart and our senses 
as well." 

"Still," Ruth said, and shook her head, while 
doubt seemed to battle with dejection in her ex- 
pression, "why should not the artist ignore the 
moral or the immoral, and simply be true to life? 

120 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

Let him go straight to nature. Truth and nature 
are after all the only guides." 

"I deny that," Van Zant opposed, and again a 
dispassionate impersonal atmosphere was about 
them and penetrated the arguments which they 
pursued with keenness. "I might maintain with 
equal justification that the whole energies of civil- 
ised man are, and have been, directed toward a 
struggle with 'nature,' the assertion of man's 
reign over her, and that this is so especially in 
art." 

"Don't you think you would have your hands 
pretty full with a difficult task?" she asked with a 
touch of irony. 

"Perhaps not more so than you would in de- 
fending your thesis," he said with a smile and a 
nod. "But that would carry us both too far," 

"What is to be the artist's guide but Truth to 
Nature?" she asked. 

"Truth to his own artistic feelings, to his un- 
conscious selection and synthesis, to his act of 
composition, which is the first step in artistic con- 
ception and creation. But that does not mean 
truth to the mere accurate rendering of the na- 
ture which happens to he before him, which 
strikes his senses pall mall with the accident of 
casual perception and vision." 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"You are surely exaggerating," Ruth protested ; 
"nobody maintains that the artist is merely to open 
his eyes and then 'photograph' with colours what 
he sees. There is, of course, a certain amount of 
selection, but ..." 

"But that 'selection' and that 'certain amount' " 
he interrupted her, "are the crucial point in this 
whole question. 'Paint what you see truthfully,' is 
a good injunction for a drawing master to give to 
his class ; but it is far from summarising the chief 
attitude of mind governing the artist who com- 
poses a picture. For the question is : What do we 
seef The confusion in criticism is due to the in- 
accurate use of the word seeing. Seeing for the 
artist does not mean 'to strike the eye," to stimulate 
the retina,' it means to perceive and to feel through 
the perception until a creative mood is awakened. 
One artist 'sees' through a decorative medium, 
another through an idea. One painter sees merely 
through his palette and brush, another through his 
heart, another through his brain; one only sees 
and paints, another sees and feels and paints, still 
another sees and thinks and then paints — and they 
are all right. The one becomes a colourist, another 
an impressionist, another a 'subject'-painter, still 
another a romanticist or classicist, and so on ad 
infinitum. One paints minutely and accurately like 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

a Van Eyck, with the sublime truthfulness and 
severity of a noble handicraft ; another paints with 
the passionate Venetian glow and sense of beauty 
of a Titian ; another with the joyous facility and 
exuberance of a Rubens ; another sees and renders 
nature with an imagination bathed in light and 
colour like a Turner or with the autumn sentiment 
of a Millet, the spring-like freshness of a Corot, 
the weird moods of a Whistler." 

"Yes, they are all so different and all so great," 
Ruth said thoughtfully. 

"Well," Van Zant continued, "let me go further 
and say, that the same objects, the same situations 
and scenes in life and nature strike the one because 
of form, mass and line — and he makes a statue ; an- 
other because of form and colour, light and shade, 
atmosphere, relation of fore and background — and 
he paints a picture; another sees the action and 
movement, the human interest in the thing, the 
situation or the scene — and he writes a poem or 
a drama ; still another goes deeper into the motives 
and characters, the education and experiences and 
surroundings which precede and produce or mod- 
ify the situations — and he may write a novel. 
Finally, some merely feel a vague personal mood 
which fills their souls to overflowing and they 
burst forth in melody, musical or lyrical. And al- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ways it is the same object or scene in 
nature. 

"It is the personal equation in the artist which 
in each case has produced one of the several works 
of art from the same object. In science we must 
strive as much as possible to eliminate this per- 
sonal equation. In art we need not; on the con- 
trary, we must encourage and develop it. We 
must come to nature, not unprejudiced, as the man 
of science must needs do; we must come full of 
prejudice, of one-sidedness derived from our ar- 
tistic bias ; we must bring something with us ; and 
this active, creative side is more to the work of 
art than nature is. Goethe somewhere writes to 
Schiller: 'Before I can begin to compose "a mu- 
sical mood" comes over me.' This is the creative, 
emotional element of 'harmony,' 'beauty,' 'art,' 
which welds and fashions the disjointed scraps of 
nature into a work of art. And the term 'musical' 
used by Goethe is instructive; because music, be- 
ing the least imitative of arts, the least bound 
down to what yoii call truth, is in so far the purest 
art, is most art. It is this harmonising of the in- 
numerable, often conflicting, elements into unity 
of conception and composition, this reduction of 
the accidental license of things in nature, as they 
are and happen, to an inner law of necessary fit- 

124 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ness within the artist's soul, which makes a statue 
and not a picture, a picture and not a statue, a 
poem, a song — which makes them all essentially 
works of art. This the artist brings in himself — 
and Truth means the truth to this artistic self in 
its relation to nature, truth to his conception of 
nature. And then follows the execution of this 
conception in the material language of each art, 
which makes others see, not only the things in na- 
ture, but the artist's conception of these things." 

"But can that important side of the artist's func- 
tion he taught?" Ruth asked. 

"Not readily," the young man continued with 
warmth. He was evidently giving vent to the 
expression of thoughts with which he had strug- 
gled for years. "Correct drawing and painting 
from a given model can be taught, and therefore 
teaching and even criticism push this part of the 
artist's work into the foreground, and even make 
it absorb the whole of the artist's function. 
The only way to teach the other sides of art 
is by criticism — moreover, sympathetic criti- 
cism." 

"What do you mean by that?" Ruth asked. 

"I mean criticism of work in which the stand- 
ards erected by the artist are for the time being 
adopted by the critic who acts as teacher ; and not 

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WHAT MAY WE READ> 

an absolute standard of his own by which all work 
is measured — this absolute standard being gen- 
erally nothing more than the narrow compass of 
his personal predilection. 

"To take an absurd, 'sledge-hammer' illustra-i 
tion, let us imagine that a young Van Eyck, or 
Diirer, were studying in the same studio with a 
Velasquez and Tintoretto, a Raphael and Correg- 
gio with a Rembrandt, a Michael Angelo and Ru- 
bens with a Holbein, Memling or Botticelli, a 
Turner and Claude with a Ruysdael and Hobbema, 
a Watts and Burne- Jones with a Sargent and 
Whistler. Now, the ideal teacher (apart from criti- 
cism in correct drawing and colouring) would 
judge and criticise the work of each one of these 
artists in the spirit of the art manifested in each 
picture. What really happens is that the teacher 
is himself, let us say, a votary of the art as prac- 
tised by Velasquez ; and down goes all that is of 
the Van Eyck, the Botticelli, the Burne-Jones 
order; and so each standard excludes sympathy 
with the other. This is not only so with the artist 
who teaches, where it is intelligible; but with the 
men whose profession is criticism. After a few 
technical phrases of the drawing-master order, 
they also judge by their personal preference, never 
attempting honestly to put themselves in the place 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

of the artist and to understand the work before 
passing judgment upon it." 

"Oh, there you are certainly right," assented 
Ruth with warmth. "But then it is the misfor- 
tune of painting that it is so vague and cannot be 
taught or criticised directly." 

"I do not think that it is peculiar to painting. In 
literature we can teach people English grammar 
and the correct use of language; but we cannot 
infuse into them lyrical and poetic inspiration, 
dramatic imagination, divination of character and 
life, coupled with the sensuous feeling for language 
which expresses those subtle workings of the heart 
and brain to all readers. These are produced by 
heredity, coupled with the proper general education 
in school and in life. And yet there is such a thing 
as genuine literary criticism, sympathetic criti- 
cism, however little of it we actually get." 

He interrupted himself, and after a moment's 
thought he continued : 

"But we have strayed hopelessly from the main 
question. I only demurred to your statement that 
'Truth' was the only guide for the artist, and that 
he is to take life as he finds it. I insist upon the 
importance of selection. Even were I to admit 
that this selection is to be reduced to a minimum, 
and that the artist's chief energies are to be di- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

rected towards the truthful rendering of what he 
sees in nature, he must always remember that the 
artistic rendering itself forms a kind of exaggera- 
tion. The art of painting and of sculpture (music 
and decorative art least, because they deal less 
with natural objects to be reproduced) — writing 
and painting of themselves emphasise, and give im- 
portance to the thing or event — of themselves they 
are a kind of idealisation, and as such they alter 
the proportion of objects, scenes and events in na- 
ture and life." 

"I half see what you mean, but I do not quite 
catch it." 

"I mean, that the very picking out of one scene 
from the innumerable scenes before us, one event 
or action from the unbroken series out of which 
it arises and into which it flows, does not only give 
emphasis to such scene or event, but, further, from 
being made permanent in stone, on canvas, or in 
print, it is magnified and intensified in its impor- 
tance. Well, you must also admit that, especially 
from the artistic point of viewing life, all things 
are not equally important. There are things which 
we all admit are monumentally weighty and last- 
ing, and others trivial and evanescent. You would 
not make a colossal bronze statue thirty feet high 
of a nigger-baby with a deformed hand and arm 

128 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

rubbing its nose, or a great wall-painting of a 
flea?" 

"There's your sledge-hammer again ! I can well 
conceive making a little statuette of the nigger- 
baby rubbing its nose, though not necessarily with 
a deformed hand — they might think it was my bad 
drawing — and I should like to make a careful 
water-colour drawing of a fly or a lady-bird." 

"By Jove! that hits me!" said Van Zant. "I'll 
drop my sledge-hammer. But let me remind you 
that in reducing the colossal dimensions, and in 
omitting the deformed arm, and in making a fly 
out of the flea, you have conceded my point. You 
have admitted the varying weightiness of artistic 
language, and the varying importance of things 
in nature, and you have entirely cast out what 
in life we consider 'objectionable' or 'disgusting.' 
Without using the sledge-hammer, I beg you to 
consider that I do mean something when I say, 
that all artistic reproduction of itself increases the 
importance and weight of what is thus chosen out 
of the myriad possibilities the artist finds in 
nature." 

"But what is the poor author, the novelist, to do, 
who deals with life? Is he to follow class stand- 
ards, those of professions? Is he to consider 
young girls or children? What is it Goethe says 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

about giving life in its fulness to the dramatist?" 
Ruth asked. 

" 'Greift nur hinein in's voile Menschenleben 
Wo ihr cs packt da ist es interessani.' 
Is that the passage you mean?" Van Zant sug- 
gested. 

"Yes, that's it," Ruth assented. 

"Well, he is to follow no authority, he is to 
grasp life in its fulness! But, surely, Goethe did 
not mean that the artist was to be like a thought- 
less child, putting its hand into a lucky-bag, or a 
greedy half-animal ferretting in a rubbish-heap 
with nothing but its nose and its hunger to guide 
it? Sledge-hammer again, I know," he continued. 
"But I am impatient with novelists who caricature 
Goethe's doctrine. I do not think that a man 
cutting his finger-nails is worthy of much space 
in print." 

"But small things are important in life." 

"Cutting finger-nails ?" 

"Yes, finger-nails may be most important." 

"How?" 

"Well," she said, "if the author — who knows 
better than you — -thinks it characteristic of a man 
to care much for the appearance of his hands. I 
suppose you would not allow him to describe a fop, 
and only want him to present heroes." 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"Now you are becoming the village black- 
smith, my dear young lady." And they both 
laughed. 

"I know I am," she said, "But you may want 
shocking " 

"And a shaking?" he added. "Is that what you 
feel just now ?" 

"A little." She smiled. Then she continued 
seriously, "No, really, why should he not dwell 
on such an act?" 

"By all means let him if it is characteristic of 
the man he is describing. Perhaps a slight men- 
tion of it will do. But I doubt whether it is worth 
a long dramatic description. Why, he may mention 
it often in connection with that fop. He may use 
the word finger-nail like a Leit-motiv in music, if 
he be a symbolist. Yet, at best, it is a poor and 
cheap form of symbolism." 

"I really do not know what and who the sym- 
bolists are," Ruth said. 

"They are artists and literary men who wish to 
use the ordinary modes of expression in their sev- 
eral arts with the pregnant, veiled, and mysterious 
meaning not ordinarily in them, and have bor- 
rowed this from music. In literature I do not mind 
that kind of thing in short lyrics; but it is essen- 
tially out of place in an art which has to deal with 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

language, the very essence and soul of which is 
clearness. Mystery, the emotional pregnancy of 
meaning, which is one of the elements of poetry, 
is conveyed in sensuous rhythms, verses, stanzas, 
complex situations ; but it cannot be pinned down 
to any words tortured out of their ordinary deno- 
tation like labels of rare wines clapped on empty 
bottles. I am out of patience with Ibsen's 'Tower,' 
with Maeterlinck's 'kisses' and 'tears' that are to 
mean much more than towers and kisses and tears. 
I even at times feel angry and froisse with the 
great master, Meredith, when he repeats the 'big 
drum' and 'beer' in 'Sandra Belloni,' the 'leg' in the 
'Egoist,' and something like it in every one of his 
powerful stories, with an exasperating secret wink 
of the eye at the reader to mark the humorous 
pregnancy of the terms. There is a want of mod- 
eration and maturity in all this." 

"Were not our 'sledge-hammer' and our 'finger- 
nails' symbolical in that sense?" Ruth asked with 
a smile. "They were convenient abbreviations for 
us." 

"Yes, they were," he assented. "But would they 
amuse you if I persisted much longer in repeating 
them?" 

"Decidedly not," she answered, raising her 
hands in protest. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"But we have rambled away into symbolism," 
she continued, trying to collect her thoughts. 
**Yes, there was something . . . what was it I 
was going to say ? Your 'big drum' has beaten it 
all out of my head." 

"Well, we were talking about the unimportant 
things in life, such as finger-nails," he suggested. 

"Exactly. That's it. I want to ask you 
whether — whether there are not things in life that 
are unimportant to some people because they have 
tried hard all their lives to make themselves be- 
lieve that they are unimportant?" 

"Things those people would call 'improper' ?" he 
suggested. 

"Perhaps," she answered. "I will tell you what 
I mean," she continued, after a moment's reflec- 
tion. "Often, in reading English books, even by 
great and powerful writers, I feel as if there were 
something they were holding back, as if they had 
been influenced too much by the views you have 
been insisting upon ; that those general considera- 
tions influenced them in their spontaneous artis- 
tic production; that they were afraid, that they 
were cowards. And then they don't convey their 
true meaning. I don't understand and feel the life 
of the characters they are describing. Haven't you 
often felt it with friends? Don't you know what 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

I mean? People who pride themselves on their 
truthfulness and say 'One ought never to say what 
one does not believe,' at the same time maintain, 
that 'one need not say all one thinks.' Well, but 
if you have an intimate friend, and she professes 
to take you into her full confidence so that you 
enter into every nook and cranny of her inner and 
outer life ; and still, all the time, there is some im- 
portant fact or side of her life which she keeps 
from you, does that not come near lying? Is the 
picture you have of her a true one, or is it not in- 
complete or mutilated or even a caricature?" 

"Oh, that's true!" Van Zant exclaimed, as he 
looked up at Ruth, whose cheeks were suffused 
with colour and whose eyes shone brilliantly 
with the excitement of what she was saying. 

"And there are things," she went on hastily, as 
if she feared to lose the thread of her thoughts or 
her own courage — "there are things that are most 
important to the lives of men and women, about 
which we have the right to know something, when 
once the author has taken us so deeply into his 
confidence that he allows us to think their thoughts 
when they are alone and forces us into their com- 
pany when, in life, we should never be there. If 
he does not tell us of those things too, his picture 
is incomplete, it is not life at all — it is a lie he is 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

presenting to us. He has been untrue to his art, to 
the solemn vow he made when he devoted himself 
to the service of the Muse — he is a coward. All 
because he fears the disapproval or censure of the 
people who are always using the term 'improper,' 
because they are habitually improper in their own 
souls." Ruth leaned back exhausted with the ef- 
fort, but with the glow of satisfaction in her face, 
as if she had unburdened herself of a weight which 
was pressing upon her and which she had feared 
to raise from her shoulders. 

"Oh, I agree with you with all my heart," Van 
Zant said warmly. "Still, I must insist upon the 
other side. The author need not be an abject slave 
to narrow tradition ; but he need not subscribe to 
the creed of Mephistopheles : 
'Denn was besteht ist werth dass es 2u Grunde 
geJit/ 

"May not the instinct of an old civilised society 
be correct when it establishes certain broad rules, 
though it may have gone too far in their formula- 
tion and in insisting upon absolute obedience to 
them when they have become stereotyped and life- 
less ? May not society, in establishing these laws, 
have felt it necessary to protect itself against the 
destructive forces threatening its very existence? 
As long as we are what we are, and for consider- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

able period, to which we can look forward, the 
family, for instance, in its deepest and widest sig- 
nificance and with all the ramifications of its influ- 
ence upon the lives of even unmarried people, is 
a fundamental social order and we cannot afford 
to ignore this." 

"But would you cut away the ground from un- 
der the feet of all reformers and those who have 
pushed humanity a step ahead in the world's great 
historical course? How if the author has the 
very aim of showing that traditions have become 
too narrow and mechanical and lifeless, to further 
the life which they are to regulate? How if he 
wishes to show the very struggle against society ?" 

"You give me timely warning. The essence of 
Greek tragedy, of all great tragedy, is the strug- 
gle of the individual, his interests and passions, 
against society and its laws and traditions. I 
should certainly not like to be the purist who 
would have made it impossible for a Prometheus, 
an Orestean trilogy, a Phaedra to have been writ- 
ten." 

"Well, then?" she asked. 

"Well, there is a difference," he continued, and 
he was evidently making an effort to establish a 
nice distinction. "Yes," he said, after a moment's 
hesitation. "The great tragedian shows the strug- 

136 



"WHAT MAY WE READ? 

gle of the individual against society and its laws 
and thereby establishes and strengthens these laws 
all the more. At all events, his chief aim in de- 
picting this struggle is to produce his great tragic 
effect, to evoke the sympathy in the audience, the 
widening and purification which come from hav- 
ing suffered with others — that is his supreme 
artistic purpose for which he uses revolt against 
society, and not the exposition and establishment 
of some new flimsy doctrinaire view of life which 
is the central aim of many modern novels 'with a 
purpose.' " 

"Are you in principle opposed to a novel with a 
purpose?" she asked. 

"Not as much as most people who use that 
term as an off-hand symbol of aesthetic condemna- 
tion. The word 'purpose' is then generally used 
in a vague and inaccurate manner and covers a 
multitude of sins. In one sense every novel, every 
work of art, has a 'purpose,' some central Idea, 
some cohesive unity of composition which keeps 
the detached threads of observation and imitative 
effort together in a compact tissue with recognis- 
able design. But the more this design and purpose 
become obtrusively manifest in themselves and by 
themselves, the more does the work of art ap- 
proach the sphere of science, the less is it a work 
137 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

of art. It ought then to be a scientific essay, not 
a drama or a story," 

"But why should it not be that?" she 
asked. 

"Because it then appeals to our 'upper con- 
sciousness' and not to our imagination and emo- 
tions — it is not a work of art. I do not want a 
story to be an ethical treatise, not even on the 
'surface' ethics of life. And still less do I want 
the author to smack his lips loudly and revoltingly 
over his own superiority and goodness. And when 
he thinks it needful to herald his work with a long 
introduction or preface of what he means to do, 
of the new thing he is doing; when he wants to 
bully the reader (who knows what he is looking 
for in a work of art) into reading such stuff in 
an entirely new way, to perform ablutions in the 
baths adjoining his ethico-theoretico-artistic sanc- 
tuary, before he enters the sacred precincts — then 
he adds insult to injury, and I drop him as an 
insufferable prig." 

"Why are you so angry with the man who in- 
sists upon writing a preface?" she asked. "We 
may want people to look properly at a new way of 
putting things, which is not generally admitted or 
traditional; why should we not help them to see 
properly ?" 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"They will find it out for themselves. Art is 
long." 

"And life is short," she threw in. 

"Thank heaven for that," he rejoined, "or 
every raving fad and fashion of the day would 
last." He paused for a moment, and then he 
looked up and said with an amused smile: "How 
curious ! we have changed swords. Here are you, 
the confirmed champion of pure art, of truth in art 
versus ethics and order, speaking for 'Purpose' 
and even 'Prefaces'; and I am opposing them. 
Perhaps, after all, you are at heart a 'Purpose' 
artist much more than you admit. And it is nat- 
ural that it should be so. You are after all a New 
England woman, and that cannot be denied or 
hidden for long." 

She looked vexed, almost angry with him. "I 
do dislike in argument to have a personal idio- 
syncrasy thrust at one, as if it affected reasoning, 
in order that it should weaken one's argument." 
And then her irritation left her and, inconsequen- 
tially, she turned upon him and said : "I might in 
the same way maintain that you are not quite 
sincere in your part of the stern moralist." 

"Perhaps we are both right in our surmises. 
We are, perhaps, both of us fighting against what 
we feel to be the chief bias, the danger in our own 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

natures; and that therefore we drop into exag- 
gerated support of the other side." 

There was an amused smile between them, as 
if they had both been found out, caught in their 
self-deception. And then he continued with seri- 
ousness : 

"Before we break ofif, there is one point I want 
to put as clearly and strongly as possible, I 
really think it is the important aspect of the 
question. 

"What I object to in many powerful and promi- 
nent modern writers of fiction and their schools, 
is the ignoring of moral law, of the organised 
order which keeps society together. And I charge 
them with committing this error not as moralists 
or immoralists, but as realists who wish to describe 
life accurately. Now I maintain that, from the 
point of view of Truth, or realism, this cannot 
be done. Apart from any moral or educational ef- 
fect upon their readers, they are not true to life, 
they are not true realists when they do this. It is 
essential to human beings that they should be so- 
cial beings, and it is essential to human action that 
it is not isolated, that it affects and fits into other 
action, that it is a part of the ideal moral unity 
which each successive society in the world's his- 
tory establishes for itself and forces into the con- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

sciousness of every social individual. If a Mau- 
passant in some of his works maintains or implies 
(and there are scores who swear by his colours) 
that the supreme, the only aim of the novelist is to 
represent what strikes him, and moreover what 
strikes him as 'curious,' 'interesting,' 'picturesque,' 
or 'grotesque' only because it happens to strike him 
thus, irrespective of any moral order or law under- 
lying such phenomena or action — the rendering 
of such human life and action is distorted and 
caricatured, has lost its organic quality in this un- 
social isolation. They may be 'studies' and 
'sketches' to hang up in his studio, but they are 
not pictures. They want the cohesive unity which 
gives life to the limb, to the arm (finely developed 
or crippled), however well they are drawn. Now 
this cohesive element in the novel is the conscious- 
ness of moral order which the author must mani- 
fest somewhere, to confirm it or to struggle against 
it, to be put forward — in 'purpose' if you like — or 
to be kept as a mere undercurrent to the ripples 
and eddies of the broad human stream as he con- 
centrates his attention upon these very ripples and 
eddies of the great river. Balzac and Flaubert 
('Madame Bovary' is almost a 'novel with a pur- 
pose'), the founders, had this; it wanes in Gau- 
tier; and the extreme modern realists try design- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

edly to avoid it. Their art is in so far not true, 
they are not even true realists." 

With this Van Zant arose from his chair and 
stretched his legs. "Now we must have a little 
walk. We have been talking a long time. I must 
have tired you." 

"Oh, no," she said earnestly, "I must thank you. 
I must confess I am quite confused about the 
whole subject. But I must also confess that you 
have shaken my former views somewhat. Still, 
I feel there is a good deal to say on the other side." 

"I should think there was!" he said, with a 
strong emphasis on the last word. 

"That is not much of a compliment to me, con- 
sidering I have been maintaining that side," she 
said with a smile. 

"But I didn't give you a fair chance to get in a 
word edgewise," he laughed. 

"It was not you who asked me for my views. I 
began by asking you for yours ; and I am sincerely 
grateful to you for what you said." 

There was bright good humour between them. 
They walked up and down briskly and then parted 
to dress for dinner. 



142 



CHAPTER X 

THE conversation which the two friends (for 
such they were rapidly growing to be) held in 
the afternoon continued to reverberate in their 
minds for the rest of the evening and kept them 
both awake; though it affected them in very dif- 
ferent ways. 

Van Zant, as he walked up and down the deck 
smoking after dinner, and as he lay in his bed 
sleepless for several hours, was not at all satisfied 
with the way he had advocated his side of the 
question and the general impression which his 
strictures would produce if they had any effect 
upon the convictions of his listener. 

He was, in fact, playing a part very unusual to 
him in thus standing up for the conservative, pro- 
hibitive and restrictive side in literature. More- 
over — and this, perhaps, made him the more un- 
comfortable — he was conveying to the young lady 
an entirely false impression of himself, that of a 
rigorous moralist. And he blushed in the dark 
when he remembered how different his acts had 
often been in the past from the general deduction 
which might be made of his conduct based on the 
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WHAT MAY WE READ> 

views and principles of life corresponding to his 
standards of morality in literature. There was a 
touch of insincerity and duplicity, a suggestion 
of "all things to all men" in his several attitudes 
to various women ; and he remembered the general 
drift of his conversations with some other women 
in which he had insisted upon the broadest toler- 
ance of things condemned by the social rigourist — 
nay of frivolity. And he imagined a dispassionate 
critic comparing the substance and tone of such 
conversations with those of the talk he had just 
had. 

How came he to insist upon this side with her 
and to show himself in that light? Was it from 
sympathy and adaptation to what he half-con- 
sciously felt was essential to her character and 
taste, or from an impulse of opposition tending 
towards domination? Perhaps both together. 

He grew more reconciled to himself and more 
satisfied with things in general when he had 
formed the resolve to rectify the untruth on some 
future occasion, and he determined to show him- 
self in a truer light in telling her something of his 
past, when opportunity offered. Poor deluded 
man ! Poor white Dove of Spirit, Child of Light, 
beating its wings against the bars and wires of 
human language and imagining that it is soaring 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

far away out of its cage of Self, through the warm 
atmosphere of earth's wide fields, into the limpid, 
ethereal clearness above the mountain-tops where 
Truth dwells eternal! As if talk about one's self, 
especially when definitely meant to summarise 
one's whole nature, ever is the truest and most in- 
fallable means of enabling others to judge of us 
truly ! It acts like the formal and lengthy explana- 
tion and apology for a supposed slight or affront 
we believe we have inflicted and which the would- 
be sufferer may hardly have noticed ; it exagger- 
ates or coarsens, at least it fixes the act of neglect 
or offence in the mind of the sufferer ; it certainly 
distorts the sense of proportion for both, and robs 
intercourse of spontaneity and naturalness. 

With this resolve, however, the young man dis- 
missed the disagreeable after-effect of the conver- 
sation as regarded his own personality. But for a 
long time he was moved by a sense of opposition 
to the views themselves which he had that day 
advocated so strongly. 

He realised with horror the danger to litera- 
ture and art in England and America if Mrs. 
Grundy — however high that lady was raised out 
of her narrow and mean bourgeois surroundings 
— was confirmed in her sway and actively directed 
the creative genius of authors and artists. Was 
145 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

not the aggressive danger to be feared from the 
opposite camp to the one he had been fortifying? 
Was he not encouraging the prurient and hypo- 
critical mind of a dominating class which in our 
times was emasculating literature, strong and true, 
healthily and broadly outspoken from Shakespeare 
on through the eighteenth century novelists? As 
has so often been maintained, was not the all-per- 
vading young-lady-reader of England and Amer- 
ica directly or indirectly constraining the novel- 
ist, fettering his fancy and gagging his tongue? 
And may the moral and educational effect not 
have been, that the "good" and "proper" writers 
and their readers were made the narrower in their 
sympathies and views, while the "bad" and "im- 
proper" remained unfettered, without moderation 
in their license, and revelled, dissipating their 
healthiest mental and moral energies, in the re^ 
volt against a stupid and insincere constraint? 

Was not the soul-stirring power of really 
"strong" books, direct in its moral effect, so weighty 
and all-important, that the vague and distant evils, 
which he had rightly indicated, become feather-light 
by contrast in the moral scales ? Would it not widen 
the sympathies and strengthen the heart, even of 
young ladies, to enter into the life of the mining 
camp at the hand of Bret Harte, or to realise the 

146 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

pleasures and pairxS, the strength and the failings 
of Tommy Atkins through the powerful presenta- 
tions of Rudyard Kipling? Was it not a great 
moral lesson, even for a young girl, to have lived 
through — forced into sympathy and out of selfish, 
ansemic apathy by the convincing and soul-thrill- 
ing power of art — the lives where drunkenness 
undermined the physical and moral welfare of in- 
dividuals and communities ? Would her heart and 
mind not come out of a few hours of such sym- 
pathy the wider, truer, richer and stronger? Why 
should she not read "I'Assommoir?" Why should 
she not, she who only thought of the shops as 
places where she could buy the finery wherewith 
to bedeck and adorn her little person, why should 
she not go through the life-struggle, the ideals, the 
passions, the joys and tears, the moments of 
strength and weakness, of the girl in "Au Bonheur 
des Dames ?" Why should not the bridge of liter- 
ary sympathy lead her for a short time over the 
gulf that separates her life from that of even a 
Marion de Lorme and a Dame aux Camelias, or 
of a lady like Anna Karenina, or of peasant girls 
like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Hetty Sorrel, 
or even of poor servant girls like Esther Waters ? 
Why not understand the natural weakness of a 
strong man in the ''Wages of Sin," and the Bohe- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

mian thoughtlessness of life in the"Viede Boheme" 
(instead of having it made more palatable and 
presentable and, therefore, more insidiously im- 
moral in the Belgravian apotheosis of a Trilby) ? 
Nay, even — and here his growing doubts became 
more obtrusive — why should the same artistic 
sympathy not lead her to understand how the pas- 
sionate, and at the same time weak and unbal- 
anced, soul of man may lead him to violent crime, 
as in "Le Crime et le Chatiment?" 

May this not be the supreme and, at the same 
time, the most direct ethical effect of fiction, with or 
without a "purpose" : to widen thesympathies. They 
who never have seen life excepting from a narrow 
window with strong social bars to it, will, un- 
trained and unprepared as they are, stumble upon 
gross reality in the course of their life, face to face 
with it, and will then be harmed and permanently 
unsettled by the brusque shock of reality or its pho- 
tographic crudeness and vulgarity when it meets 
their eye in the columns of the daily press. Sym- 
pathy then becomes suffering, intellectual altruism 
becomes selfish attraction or repulsion — the facul- 
ties, the very nerves that are affected, are different 
from those called into play in literature. While 
literature gives the catharsis, the supreme purifi- 
cation of its essence, to whatever it represents by 

148 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

the higher form and beauty of artistic construc- 
tion and composition ! 

May not the final end of such great and 
strong books, the supreme teaching which their 
art conveys, be to them that of true Christ-Hke 
humanity and charity, which led to those sublime 
and noble words : "Forgive her, for she has loved 
much" ? May it not teach them to say, as it did 
Richard Baxter when he saw the criminals led to 
the gallows, "But for the grace of God, there goes 
Richard Baxter" ? 



Ruth also was absorbed by the after-thoughts 
of the conversation she had had with Van Zant. 
It had impressed her more than any con- 
versation had done for years. And the impres- 
sion was gaining in depth and in power the 
more the actual words were fading from mem- 
ory. She felt more and more perplexed about 
the right and wrong of the main question 
and the immediate drift of each detail; while 
the total effect upon her mood was one of 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

unrest and dissatisfaction. It was almost as 
if one of the main supports upon which she 
had rested so firmly for years and from which she 
had contemplated life in general, and her own po- 
sition and purpose in it, had been removed or 
made unstable ; and this disturbed her equanimity, 
shook her confidence, and was likely to make her 
intensely miserable. 

And then she asked herself why such a talk 
should have made so deep an impression. She had 
heard views of this kind expressed before — often ; 
they were similar to those held by her father. 
Surely, they were not particularly well put and 
not strikingly original either in form or substance. 
It could not have been the commanding personal- 
ity of the speaker. This she denied emphatically : 
his presence and manner were far from evoking 
the respect which was at once called forth by her 
father. Nor did she approach him with anything 
like the reverence she felt for her parent. On the 
contrary, the young man called out In her a cer- 
tain opposition, if not combativeness. It was 
strange and inexplicable! 

Still there were one or two points new to her, 
with which he had appealed to her strongly and 
had set her thoughts running in new channels. 
And these were of the greatest importance to the 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

whole question. This was especially so with what 
he said of the nature of our emotional life, our 
senses and our imagination: that they were be- 
yond the control of our will and were affected by 
associations — even in literature. 

But had her indiscriminate reading affected her 
in this way? She could honestly say that it had 
not. But if it had not, was it not because she was 
one of the innocent young girls whom he classed 
with the hla.<;e men of the world, as being unaf- 
fected because of the great purity, guarded by ig- 
norance of life? This she resented with irritation. 
And yet, perhaps it was so — yes, it must be so. 

And as her clear thought and self-questioning 
carried her on, she was forced to recognise that 
there was one side in which her reading had af- 
fected her life : it had helped to unfit her for the 
company of her "natural" friends, those of her 
own social circle, with whom she had been 
brought up ; it had fostered her discontent with the 
ordinary life into which she had been born, and 
had made her impatient of its spirit and tone, of 
its customs — of the whole of it. 

And then a luminous ray of self-analysis was 

cast over her past, and she asked herself whether 

she had really read and thought, whether she had 

approached these works of "art" from the correct, 

isi 



WHAT MAY WE READ> 

the truly "artistic" point of view, whether she had 
received them into the heart of her imagination; 
or whether her mind, preoccupied by one central 
idea — which was really self-centred — had not 
blocked the way to her imagination and her emo- 
tions? And this selfish point of view, which had 
regulated her life and thought for years and had 
thus really made her unreceptive of the art in fic- 
tion, was her own protest against her Puritan 
surroundings. Was her reading not all affected by 
a partisan view, practical, bourgeois f Did she not 
see it all through the spectacles of her own striv- 
ings ? Did she not read them as a loudly professed 
young Bohemian to find confirmation for the 
theories of her own life? Did she not pick out of 
all — even the most "repulsive" sides of it — the 
theories which would confirm her in the indepen- 
dent life she saw fit to choose for herself? 

And then her analysis, by its own weight, 
pushed further afield, away from herself, into 
more general application. Suppose a woman read 
such stories who did not care for her husband or 
her home life? Would she not also "pick out" that 
one side and dwell upon it and be confirmed in 
the "theories" she desired to build up — to form 
a moral or immoral basis for the desired life of 
her imagination? Was not the real danger to be 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

found in the manner in which we approached such 
reading ? After all, he had said this, and she only 
now realised the truth of what he meant: — 
Whether we read such books as pure literature and 
art, or as guides to conduct. Moreover, such 
guides do not clearly appeal to the brain, to be 
critically weighed as moral injunctions. They 
are vaguer artistic suggestions insidiously flatter- 
ing our sympathies and prejudices, and lead us 
to open out our hearts, our feelings and desires as 
we live through the scenes and passions depicted 
with literary power. The result is that we are al- 
most unconsciously affected and guided, because 
our brain and our thoughts on things moral do 
not clearly and distinctly regulate and direct our 
feelings. 

She felt bewildered; and again her thoughts 
turned to the personal reminiscence of the conver- 
sation. It was as if the displeasure of bewilder- 
ment led her by association of feelings to think of 
him again. She did not like this disturbing power 
in him. After all, he was very narrow, as narrow 
as her father and his friends. He treated her as 
a child, though he seemed so deferential ; and she 
did not like his tone at all. 

He had much to learn still that lay beyond the 
commercial and financial spheres, and even the 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

wide literary reading in which he had indulged. 
How he would be shocked if he knew all she had 
read and all she had seen! He did not know the 
student's life in the Quartier Latin; it would do 
him good to realise that side of life as well : it 
would widen him out, broaden his sympathies, 
supply one side to his fine nature which would 
make him a perfect specimen of the man of the 
world. 

Then also her sense of truthfulness demanded 
that he should judge her rightly and that he 
should know that side of her life — even if she 
should sink in his estimation. She owed it to him 
for the kindness and frankness he had shown her. 
And thus, for personal and impersonal reasons, 
for herself and his own good, she resolved to 
bring that lighter, "wickeder" side of life before 
him. 



154 



CHAPTER XI 

THUS it was that after the serious conversation 
the two friends had had, which ought to have 
put their relation to one another on a soHd basis, 
their talk became for the time being lighter — 
lighter in substance and lighter in tone — though 
there was something forced in this lightness. 

It was Ruth who led the attack at first. She 
seized the earliest opportunity of telling him of 
her work and play in Paris, referred to books, 
especially "strong" French novels, whenever she 
could, threw in — though with a somewhat fever- 
ish haste and eagerness — accounts of the amusing 
evenings she and her friends had had, even men- 
tioned a visit to the Chat Noir. She was so intent 
on giving him an account of all this, that she never 
expected an answer from him and had no atten- 
tion left to study the impression it produced upon 
him. This she regretted afterwards; for she 
would have liked to dwell upon this effect when 
alone. And then she contrasted the stimulating 
and interesting life in Paris v/ith the flat and mo- 
notonous, bourgeois life she had known in Ameri- 
ica. Here he succeeded in arresting the nervous 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

flow of her outpouring. He protested that he 
had known European Hfe for ten years, in all the 
capitals and in the various layers of their society. 
And she had to admit to herself that he had had 
opportunities to study wider circles, though he 
may not have known her own as intimately. 

And then he proceeded to give an eloquent and 
graphic picture of the cultured and refined society 
which, years ago, he had met in Boston, and the 
memory of which stood out brightly whenever he 
had thought of it abroad. He compared the 
circles of most refined social intercourse in Europe 
with those he knew in Boston, and gave, with lov- 
ing touches of the brush, life and colour to his 
characterisation : the circle of old gentlemen with 
whom he had dined at the Thursday Club — men 
of breeding and refinement coupled with moral 
elevation, wide and solid culture. They were elo- 
quent and sympathetic talkers, as he imagined 
the men who grouped round "Athenian Aberdeen" 
a couple of generations ago, the dilettanti of Eng- 
land, to have been. He had sought those men in 
vain in the England of to-day, and had generally 
found their sons and grandsons with coarsened 
manners talking "horse" and "gun" and often sell- 
ing the libraries and collections which their ances- 
tors had founded. He remembered the conversa- 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

tions at luncheons and dinners in Boston where 
there were ladies, peeresses to those intellectual 
peers, such as he had never met with in the unpro- 
fessional sets of European capitals. 

As he spoke Ruth at once became more 
thoughtful and serious; and there passed before 
her eyes the vision of her own father and his 
friends, whom Van Zant had portrayed with mas- 
terly skill, composing a beautiful picture from the 
attraction and charm of which she could not 
escape. And as it was beginning to lay hold of 
her, and she felt the freshness and strength of her 
enthusiasm for the Latin Quarter ebb away, she 
collected her forces for a renewed attack. 

She maintained that what he said might be true 
as applied to dilettanti; but that was just what she 
complained of ; the real, serious and strong profes- 
sional, the real worker, could not exist, he was 
stifled in that atmosphere. In her own art, for in- 
stance, no painter could be produced there. 

Van Zant had some misgivings in meeting this 
objection by the feeble argument of enumerating 
individuals ; but he mentioned Mrs. Fuller, Hunt, 
Inness, then Whistler, Sargent, Harrison, and 
Abbey, as such genuine hard workers and real 
artists. And though he met her objection that 
most of these lived and worked in Europe, by 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

pointing to Mrs. Fuller and Inness as the most 
truly American, he felt the weakness of his own 
position. But she did not follow up her own ad- 
vantage on this point. 

"Be that as it may," she said, "I can't find any- 
thing to paint in America. The life in the streets, 
the life in the houses, the dress, the faces, they are 
all flat and commonplace — at all events, they don't 
interest me." 

"And nature?" he asked. 

"Nature, also," she continued, "is hard and un- 
paintable; nothing to catch hold of, no atmos- 
phere, no mystery, no suggestion — it is all there, 
evident, manifest for everybody to look at, and for 
nobody to interpret — it is too democratic." 

"You are a romanticist," he said calmly. 

"How dare you call me that!" she said, with 
indignation. "I despise them." 

"I don't," he said, with exasperating calmness. 
"I don't believe in 'unpaintableness' of certain 
landscapes and atmospheres (this has been dis- 
proved as long ago as when Turner painted), as 
little as I believe that only picturesque and 'strong' 
faces make good portraits — as little as I believe 
that certain things cannot be expressed in words 
'though we know them and feel them,' as the 
schoolboy says. Some are harder and some are 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

easier to express, and that's where the true artist 
and writer come in." 

"Well, they are too hard for me!" she said 
with the expression of one who knows too much 
to think it worth arguing the point. 

"That's because you are, curiously enough, a 
'classicist' as well as a 'romanticist' — the two 
things, strange to say, generally go together. 
'Harder' and 'easier' generally depend upon the 
preventions with which the art of the day has led 
us to regard nature and the methods and 'tricks* 
with which the school of the day has taught us to 
express and render them. A 'picturesque' face and 
scenery are those which, according to the leading 
artists' methods of painting (which arose to a 
great extent out of their personal way of seeing 
and feeling), they naturally chose as most easily 
and adequately rendered. This then establishes 
the Classic. Then there comes a revolt of the 'new 
ones,' who in their turn become 'classic' Thus 
plcin air succeeds studio light, impressionism, 
realism of detail, and so on. It is worth trying the 
unpicturesque and unpaintable hardness of Amer- 
ican landscape now." 

"You had better try it," Ruth said, with a sneer 
in her voice. 

"Perhaps I have," he answered calmly; and 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

there was a pause, before he continued, "I once 
tried to sketch in Greece. People said the same 
thing of its scenery and its atmosphere which they 
say about America. Well, I found it very hard, 
but I went on trying. I found that I had to cast 
the atmosphere of Fontainebleau and York- 
shire moors, even of Holland canals, quite out 
of my mind and eye and — out of my brush. 
And one day, in one sketch, I thought I had suc- 
ceeded." 

"I should like very much to see the attempt," 
Ruth said with an incompletely hidden irony in 
her voice. 

"Well, I think I have it in my trunk with a few 
others, and I'll try and find it. There will be light 
enough after dinner for me to show it." 

Here they dropped the subject. For some time 
they sat in silence. They were following their 
own thoughts. A dejection came over her, and 
she said almost as if talking to herself : 

"Oh, how hard it is, even under the most fa- 
vourable conditions ! I sometimes feel like giving 
it up altogether in despair. After all, I shall never 
paint properly, and it will only be second-best — if 
it is that! After I have worked hard and feel 
elated and satisfied with my endeavour, I see the 
work of a great master, and I know I shall never 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

attain such excellence. And then I feel I must give 
it all up. Only the best is really worth doing! 

There was a pained expression in her face and 
deep sadness in her voice. 

"There's where I think you and so many others 
are wrong. What right have you to expect to do 
the best, to be a Titian or a Velasquez or a Rem- 
brandt or a Turner, who come once in a century ? 
The second-best must never be confounded with 
the second-rate. Because a man cannot play the 
violin like Joachim, there is no reason why he 
should crash his fiddle to pieces or snap his bow. 
He need only not attempt the Beethoven or 
Brahms Concerto, which belong to Joachim; but 
there is many a Schumann Fantasiestiick which 
he can play in his rendering as well as Joachim 
can." 

"Do you really think so?" Ruth asked. There 
was a pleading eagerness in face and voice, all 
her superior irony had at once vanished, and she 
looked gratefully into his eyes. And with this 
brighter impression, he left her to hunt for his 
drawings. 



i6i 



CHAPTER XII 

IT was their last evening on board, which so 
often causes even bad sailors, who from the 
beginning are impatiently looking forward to the 
end of the voyage, to feel some regret at having 
to leave the ship with which they have come to 
terms of armed neutrality bordering upon friendly 
alliance. This regret is intensified if people have 
made friends and formed a circle which will be 
broken up, scattered in all the directions of the 
compass, when once their feet step on firm land. 

With Ruth and Van Zant the idea of a speedy 
parting came as a painful surprise and dis- 
appointment. They had come to drift into daily 
intercourse so naturally, that it had speedily be- 
come a fixed habit. And the other members of the 
party, no doubt directed in their action by the 
silent example of Mrs. Sandeman, seemed to take 
it for granted that the two were meant to be more 
intimate with each other than with the rest of the 
party, and they made it easy and natural for them 
to be alone. The Turks have a phrase which 
shows a clear perception of the influence of travel- 
ling together upon the growth of acquaintance- 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ship; if they wish to indicate that they know a 
man well they say: "Oh, I have travelled with 
him." The few days which the two travellers had 
spent together had, in many respects, brought 
them nearer to one another than years of acquain- 
tanceship under the ordinary conditions of so- 
ciety. They had laid bare to each other, if not 
their deepest feelings, at least a great deal of their 
inner and outer life; they had found numerous 
points of contact in thought and reading and had 
established that facile natural understanding 
which paves the way to deepest intimacy and in- 
sures its constant supply of mutual confession and 
understanding. And now this was all to end ! 

With the feeling of regret at this prospect there 
also came an impulse of haste, haste not to lose 
time in these few hours which still remained, a de- 
sire to say as much and to be as truthful as possi- 
ble. They cast off the reserve, the grudging econ- 
omy of mutual confidence, which a just tact im- 
presses upon us when acquaintanceship has indefi- 
nite time for growth. This reserve in the advance 
of intimacy, which the inexperienced or unrefined 
do not feel, arises almost out of an artistic presci- 
ence, a sense of proportion. It causes us to check 
the impulse which makes for unreserved intimacy, 
because we realise that time is required to ensure 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

a gradual and natural growth of understanding, 
leading to the climax of friendship; and this 
climax is then safe from the disastrous effect of a 
bathos which robs such a soical work of art, such 
a ^^wr^-picture which we live and unconsciously 
compose, of all grace, dignity and lasting har- 
mony. But time was pressing ; their departure was 
at hand, and each felt for the other such great pos- 
sibilities of friendship. 

This was the predominant mood in Ruth as she 
sat on deck after dinner and waited for Van Zant, 
who had gone to fetch his drawings. He had, as 
usual, to hunt to the very bottom of his 
trunk before he found them. Even if his work 
was amateurish, as she expected it to be, she no 
longer felt the prospective pleasure in patronising 
him and in making him realise the mistake of his 
slightly presumptuous manner of superiority to 
her, at least, in the sphere of art. She would pass 
over it quietly, and then they would have one of 
their good, friendly talks. 

Van Zant arrived on deck with a portfolio, 
which he proceeded to open. 

"I have brought you three or four drawings," 

he said, "but I want you to examine one of them. 

It is the only one I am a little proud of, because 

after repeated attempts in which I was baffled, I 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

imagine that I at last succeeded in rendering what 
so many people have said was almost unpaintable. 
The first three are ordinary studies in England 
and Scotland, the last is a view taken at Athens, 
on the south slopes of Lycabettus, taking in a 
corner of Hymettus on one side, the Acropolis on 
the other, and a strip of sea with the hills of 
.^gina." 

With this he handed her the four drawings. 
She took up the first with an expression of calm, 
sympathetic curiosity ; but the moment she looked 
at it her whole expression changed abruptly; her 
eyes opened wide with surprise and even wonder, 
her lips parted, her head and neck remained fixed 
in the position in which she had first gained sight 
of the drawing. She had apparently forgotten all 
about the young man who was seated opposite to 
her and was eagerly watching her face, flattered 
and almost elated with the effect his work was 
producing upon her. Then she stretched out her 
arm to its furthest length and looked at the draw- 
ing with contracted eyes to get the general effect 
of tone and colour; and then again she held it 
close to her face to examine the method he had 
applied in producing the effect. And then with 
feverish haste she began to examine the other 
sketches in the same manner. But when she came 
i6s 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

to the last her surprise reached its height ; she sat 
rigidly gazing upon it; the widely opened eyes 
and the parted lips seemed set in trance-like 
frigidity. 

Van Zant had in truth realised in this drawing 
the one masterpiece of his artistic career. While 
the others were strong renderings of English Mid- 
land and Scotch moorland scenery, with grey sky 
and clouds, blue haze, strong browns and lumi- 
nous yellows, of the impressionist order, remark- 
able, but paralleled by many an artist in France 
and England — this last drawing of a typical Greek 
landscape was something quite original. He had 
succeeded in giving it clear cut, definite, brilliant 
limpidity and firmness, and had still avoided the 
hard, sober methods which would have reduced 
such a picture to the commonplace old-school 
drawing, to mechanical hardness of texture, of 
outline and of colour. His impressionist feeling 
had, on the one hand, enabled him to select the 
truly essential features from the equable clearness 
and precision of atmosphere and design; and, on 
the other hand, it had enabled him to give a 
warmth of colour and tone and a softness of line 
to the scenery which acted like the expression of 
pulsating, almost passionate feeling, cast over, and 
beaming forth from, the features of a face perfect 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

in its classic proportions and in the chiselled finish 
of its every line. 

The work in this drawing, giving" nobility and 
life to a scene which in other hands would have 
been commonplace, came from the individuality 
of the artist ; this had asserted and manifested it- 
self, through all the restraint and convention in 
the difficulties of technique, as truth to his own 
feelings and conceptions. He had felt this scene 
as an artist the first evening on which his eye 
passed from the purple slopes of Hymettus, over 
the bay, to the distant hills of ^g'ma. ; he allowed 
himself to be thrilled with all the refinement of de- 
sign, the variety and strength of the colours which 
presented so varied a scale of harmonies that no 
human register could compass all its contrasted 
tints and shadings. And still it was all harmonised 
in him as he gazed upon it into one mood, one 
great feeling. And if it could thus be harmonised 
in his soul, surely there must be means in his art 
to mould this variety into artistic unity ! 

And so he went, evening after evening, gazed 
and studied, took graphic notes and ventured upon 
rapid sketches. And then he set to work. He must 
have made about twenty drawings, which he tore 
up again. One aspect, one portion of the design, 
one piece of colour, a part of the sky, seemed true 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

and correct; but the whole did not harmonise. 
When he looked at it in his room in broad day- 
light it never succeeded, by the colour and line on 
the paper, to evoke in him just that completeness 
of mood which he had felt upon gazing over the 
plain to sea and mountains as he stood in the even- 
ing light at the foot of Hymettus. And this was 
to him the test of success. Could he force himself 
while he sat in his room, and then the spectator 
who was not in Greece, even had never seen that 
piece of nature, into that very artistic mood which 
he had felt, truthfully — the truth consisting in the 
mood, not in the facts and details of outer nature? 
If he could not do this, he was not the true artist. 
If art could not compass this task, it had no right 
to exist among the spiritual efforts of man ! Sug- 
gestiveness, artistic reticence, were all good and 
well ; but the real work of art expressed fully and 
convincingly what the artist felt in the fulness and 
unity of his creative mood ; and if his work stimu- 
lated several naive and unpreoccupied people to 
different thoughts and feelings, however beautiful 
these might be, it was imperfect, incomplete, it 
was not a masterpiece. 

Phidias's Olympian Zeus did not suggest, it 
expressed, it realised an ideal; it did not merely 
stimulate the visual imagination of the spectator 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

to fashion in a day-dream a vision which was 
evoked by, and reacted upon, the highest reHgious 
feehngs ; but it brought visibly, in material forms, 
with truth to nature in every detail, so grand and 
sublime an image, such beauty, grace and har- 
mony of colour and line to the eye, that the actual- 
ity before the gaze of each spectator was greater, 
more supremely beautiful and harmonious in its 
grandeur, than anything he had ever seen in day- 
dream or night-dream. It was a revelation, it was 
something new, before unfelt, which the finer ar- 
tistic vision and conception, the more subtle and, 
at the same time, more intense, power of feeling 
and seeing of the born artist had made real in the 
material forms of his art by the inspired and pa- 
tient work of his hands. Thus Quintillian 
could say of it that "it had added something to the 
received religion." 

And so one day, being impregnated and sat- 
urated with the forms with which he had fallen in 
love, yet with which love long and continuous 
familiarity of every feature and aspect had en- 
nobled passion to the highest worship, he worked 
on feverishly, his willing hand following like a 
faithful slave the ardent soul, itself mastered by 
one passionate idea and desire of artistic contem- 
plation and expression. And when the next day 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

he looked at his work he smiled upon it and was 
satisfied. He had never before felt this lofty 
mood, this elevation as of soaring, and with it 
that peace and supreme repose of soul. For once 
he really thought that he was an artist born. But 
this inspired and joyful contentment of soul never 
came again in the following years ; and he realised 
that it was but one inspiration, strange and un- 
common, to him unfamiliar, yet to the true artist 
renewed with every visit of the Muse who kissed 
his brow. 

While he gazed upon Ruth, who sat speechless, 
he suddenly felt the sunshine, the atmosphere, the 
whole mood of Athens gently creep over him, 
trance-like; and the joy he had felt at his artistic 
fulfilment, when he sat that day at Athens in his 
room and gazed upon the work of his own hands, 
returned, but all was vague and blended; and 
Ruth's image, though actually before his eyes, 
seemed to mingle and blend with the remote mood 
of Grecian beauty, harmonised with the rosy light 
of Hellas, reminiscence and reality combined into 
a new dream-like spell which held him as his eyes 
were fixed upon that fair woman. 

Suddenly, he was recalled to the present by 
Ruth's voice. Her face, which had been pale, was 
now suffused with a blush, her eyes were full of an 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

expression of shame and reproach as she burst 
forth : 

"How cruel of you ! How unjust and unkind ! 
You have been wilfully deceiving me in order to 
humiliate me. Why did you not tell me you were 
an artist ? Look what you have made me feel now, 
by withholding a truth which amounts to untruth- 
fulness ! You have allowed me to talk to you as if 
I were an artist and as if you were an amateur, 
and I have innocently been taken in, and have 
acted and spoken upon this suggestion. And all 
the time you were ttn mditre and I was the stu- 
dent, the beginner. And you knew it all the while, 
and probably smacked your lips in anticipation of 
this moment, when you would make me feel a fool 
and see me humbled and ashamed of myself. Oh ! 
it is cruel !" There was a rirtg of mortification, 
almost of tears, in her voice. 

Van Zant felt touched with the passionate gen- 
uineness of her reproach. It was true that he had 
modestly forgotten his past as an artist, and had 
not thought it worth his while, or her interest, to 
give her an autobiographical sketch. She did not 
elicit such a confidence, nor had she given him 
an opportunity of telling her of his claims. She 
had, as a matter of fact, assumed throughout an 
implied superiority to him in such matters, which 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

he did not resent, but which made it difficult for 
him to define his own position without assertive- 
ness. Still there no doubt had been lurking in him 
the conviction of his reserve force and superior 
position, even in the spheres in which she had ar- 
rogated supremacy; and this added a certain hu- 
morous touch of masculine bonhomie to his re- 
gard for her. But now the humour had fled, and 
he felt genuine regret, as well as sympathy with 
her mortification. 

"You wrong me, dear Miss Ward, if you at- 
tribute the slightest design to my reticence con- 
cerning my past artistic career, for it is past." In 
explanation of his attitude he gave her a rapid 
outline of his life since he had left College. And 
then he continued : 

"But I quite understand what you feel and your 
just indignation with me. There is a phase of 
silence and reserve which comes dangerously near 
to insincerity and untruthfulness. I have often 
felt it in lighter matters when I have been al- 
lowed to talk about things and people, others re- 
ceiving my information in receptive attention, as 
if it were acceptable information, while all the 
while they knew much more about the things, and 
the people were their intimate friends or even re- 
lations." 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

"They buy their dignified appearance of reserve 
and modesty at the expense of our humiliation," 
she put in, already disarmed by his candid avowal. 

"Quite so," he said; and he went on with 
serious yet deferential firmness. "I now owe it to 
you to tell you that I know more about Paris life, 
of Bohemian life, from every side and in every 
aspect than you do. I have lived in the Latin 
Quarter for years, and portions of my life will 
certainly not bear close scrutiny from people with 
strict views. I not only know the Chat noir, but I 
have danced at BuUier's in the old days. I have 
known the women and girls whom you only read 
about, and whom you would be genuinely shocked 
to meet and live with in real life. Poor things! 
the best that can happen to them is to drift back 
into bourgeois routine as soon as possible. If not, 
they sink low. Or, if lancees in the Quartier 
Latin, they may, upon leaving it, advance to the 
highest mercenary degradation of brilliant suc- 
cess in the high life of the demi-monde. I assure 
you it is not beautiful nor gay. It is Intensely sad 
or cruelly grotesque. The sooner a man emerges 
out of that life, the teething and infants' diseases 
stage of artistic ebullience, into the manhood of 
creative artistic vigour, the better. For infants' 
diseases are more fatal when they attack adults. 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

You can tell me nothing about that life, nothing 
that appeals to me. If striking and good work 
emanates from it, it is owing to positive qualities 
of genius or talent and perseverance in the 
workers which are strong enough to stand its en- 
ervating effect; just as the life of fashionable so- 
ciety need not kill strong artistic powers, though 
it would weaken the creative temperament in pro- 
portion as it engrossed the attention and passion 
of the worker." 

As Ruth listened the sense of humiliation grad- 
ually left her, while at the same time her attitude 
towards him had changed and there was a distinct 
touch of humility in the tone of her next question. 

"I should like to ask you one more personal 
question," she said. "Why did you, with your 
great powers, and considering the proficiency you 
had attained, give up painting?" 

And then he told her how the Greek drawing 
was the only piece of work that had satisfied him. 
How he realised that he could never aspire to be 
the master-painter as he conceived him. 

"But why," she asked further, "did you en- 
courage me to continue, and be satisfied with sec- 
ond-best work for myself? Is there such a dif- 
ference between us?" 

"Because I am a man and you are a woman," 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

he answered with bluntness, after having hesi- 
tated to find some mild way of putting a differ- 
ence which he felt rather than understood. 

"But what difference does that make in such a 
question?" she asked, with a combative ring in 
her voice. 

"A great deal, and a great many differences," 
he answered quietly. "I cannot undertake to enu- 
merate them all, even if I were able to do so. 
But, in the first place, you must remember that 
man is, as yet, the natural breadwinner in the 
community, and in so far more is expected of him 
and he must demand more of himself." 

"Why so? May not the woman be the bread- 
winner ?" 

"Yes, she may. But remember I said the 'nat- 
ural' breadwinner. The cases in which the women 
are the breadwinners of the family are excep- 
tional, and I am not attempting to account for the 
exceptional, but simply for the general platform 
upon which men and women still stand in the eyes 
of the world." 

"Even if I grant you that he is the 'natural 
breadwinner,' as you call him, how does that af- 
fect the question?" she pursued. 

"Perhaps you will say, only in a remote man- 
ner, but it certainly does. For it is but natural 
I7S 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

that the breadwinner, who, from the very outset, 
faces the world in his struggle for existence or 
supremacy in work, should take a more concen- 
trated, exclusive, less directly social (if you like 
to call it so) view of his work and enterprise." 

"Does man not always remain a social being, 
even though he take this view of his profession 
or vocation ; or, at all events, ought he not to re- 
main one?" 

"He ought indeed, and that is the ideal. It is 
all a question of proportion. The question is: 
What is to be the first, the most engrossing side 
of our life, to which the others must be subor- 
dinated? And in deciding this a man, as well as 
a woman, must consider the general proportion of 
life, natural aptitude as well as natural duties — 
perhaps even the relation between the actual de- 
mand and need of such work in the great market 
of the age and of society — though I think this 
latter point is difficult to gauge, and is a criterion 
very dangerous of application." 

"What do you mean by your last qualification?" 
she asked with a puzzled look. 

"I mean that if we have satisfied ourselves as 
to what we can do and practise best, and are clear 
as to the immediate duties before us, it is not ad- 
visable to trouble much about what the world, the 
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demand of the world's market, requires. For it is 
almost impossible to estimate such demand (which, 
moreover, is often created by the very supply of- 
fered) ; and the constant consideration of what 
the world wants, may finally merely mean "What 
will tell" and "What will pay?" and this may de- 
grade the worker himself, stunt his moral and 
creative growth." 

"Oh, I understand you now, and I agree with 
you. But in considering the proportion of life, 
what is the difference between man and 
woman?" 

"Well, to choose vocations which run counter 
to 'natural' social and domestic duties we must be 
very sure of our own aptitude for such vocations 
and of the relative claim of such duties. In pro- 
portion as the vocation runs counter to the ordi- 
nary tasks about us, and in proportion as these 
tasks are just and clamorous, must we be con- 
vinced of the aptitude. Now, I maintain that in 
general the natural and just social and domestic 
demands upon woman are greater than upon man ; 
and she must therefore be surer than he that she 
has the aptitude of a George Sand or a George 
Eliot, if she wishes to base her life upon the stan- 
dards of these great artists, so that nothing less 
will satisfy her, and anything less produces a 
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misery and discontent which paralyse her effi- 
ciency and sour her temper." 

There was a pause in which Ruth was evidently 
pondering over his words, which applied so di- 
rectly to her own case. And then he continued : 

"You see, in the light of the question we are 
discussing, there is an important difference in the 
several classes of work to which we devote our 
life, and in the various initial prospects with which 
we approach even these vocations. There are some 
professions that are in themselves less in con- 
sonance with the ordinary routine of social life 
than others — they are less social, less domestic, 
they are non-comformist. And in these, again, 
there are aspects and phases which favour or im- 
pair our 'social' qualities, prepare us to respond to 
the normal demands of the society in which we 
live, or to lose our 'normality,' to be at war with 
our environment. Roughly speaking, the vocation 
of pure Art and Science, which demand the high- 
est concentration upon the work itself, the search 
of abstract beauty and abstract truth, irrespective 
of the practical world around us, specialisation of 
thought and life, isolation of phenomena — these 
are, in so far, unsocial. Business, politics, the law, 
and most ordinary occupations, naturally and 
necessarily bring us into contact with our fellow- 

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men, their needs and desires, and of themselves 
force us to consider them at every moment, within 
our very work, however much we may be en- 
grossed by the work as such, however much we 
may specialise. He who takes up Art or Science in 
this light, who nobly wishes to resign a part of the 
humanity in him, to increase the humanities in the 
world we live in, makes a noble sacrifice, he is one 
of God's prophets — almost a martyr. But let him 
go to the stake with his eyes open ; and, above all, 
let him not be a martyr without being a prophet — 
for this is not noble, it is grotesque." 

He paused, and his manner changed as the 
memory of his past experience came back to him. 

"I shall never forget the hours I spent, many 
years ago, when I was little more than a boy, with 
a world-reformer, the greatest and boldest, as well 
as the deepest of the revolutionary theorists in our 
age. Whether right or wrong, he was a true and 
noble man, a giant with the simplicity of a child — 
a true prophet. In a moment of extreme sadness, 
amid the constant, untiring and arduous labours for 
his cause, he gave an account of the miseries of his 
past life. His refined and patient wife had just 
left the room. She was emaciated and enfeebled by 
constant struggle, she who had shared all his 
exiles and direst hardships was now stricken with 
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a mortal disease. He related how at one time they 
had suffered from hunger and thirst, not only the 
misery of exile from their home, but the struggle 
for the very necessaries of life; so that, while 
writing his monumental work and refusing all 
offers of material support on condition of a slight 
compromise of opinion or conviction, he had lost 
one of his children from actual starvation. I re- 
member how, boy that I was, I summarised the 
moral of this sad experience when I left him by 
the words : "The man who marries an Idea must 
not marry a woman." 

He again paused and looked before him, af- 
fected in reverential memory by the image of the 
lion-like martyr to a great cause passing before 
his eye. And then he continued with a resentful 
passion in his voice: 

"He was a prophet, there was something sub- 
lime in him! But the satellites, the intellectual and 
moral parasites hanging about him and clinging 
to him, who merely let their wives and children 
starve without producing the great work, who 
posed and danced before the mirror of their petty 
vanity — or, more dangerous still, the concave mir- 
ror of a reflecting, though unreflective, passionate 
mob — giving back to them the image of their 
puny bodies, and their simian faces in colossal 

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proportions, it is true, but with all their hideous 
grotesqueness — there was nothing of the prophet, 
nothing sublime in them !" 

Ruth sat in silence, following every word and 
every mood evoked by his narrative. And then his 
voice and manner changed to a softer key as he 
proceeded : 

"Well, I have been taking extreme cases. Let 
us remember that both in Art and Science we may 
fulfil the promise that is in us without this martyr- 
dom, when we find that we are not born as proph- 
ets. Nay, our work then will be all the better for 
being cast in its true mould, it will be strengthened 
by our very normality, as it will melt into inef- 
ficiency or grotesqueness when the poor mass of 
our metal is poured into a mould too wide for our 
capacities. Even the man with a social mission, 
instead of aspiring to be a world-reformer, will 
then, as a simple schoolmaster, a clergyman — if 
such be his faith — a doctor, or even an or- 
dinary business-man and employer of labour, with 
widened and charitable views on his interests and 
duties, fulfil his share in world-reforming. With 
a little self-repression, and, above all, perseverance 
of effort, it is much easier to reconcile a great 
variety of duties and interests in life than people, 
in their mental and moral self-indulgence — cow-> 
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ardice, are willing to admit. For life itself is 
varied when it is normal, and we require this va- 
riety to remain healthy and sane human beings. 
Consider as well this one side of our life, my dear 
friend : the complete expression and artistic fulfil- 
ment of the powers, aptitudes and tasks within us ! 
Because you cannot be a Titian, you need not stop 
painting. We so often think that the intensity of 
our desire is a measure of our capacity. But the 
question is, What do we desire? Our eyes are 
fixed upon the achievement, the success of a great 
man, instead of dwelling upon the inner and outer 
conditions which produced them, the steps by 
which they were attained. We must listen to the 
call of each power and aptitude within us ; and if 
we are fortunate enough to be able to give them 
our ear, then we ought to bring out each one, to 
make ourselves that perfect thing which we were 
thus predestined to be. If we have a latent talent 
for art within us, it is our duty, and ought to be 
our pleasure, to bring it out ; and not fling it away 
because that talent does not happen to be the 
genius of Titian. And as we are not Titians, but 
children of our fathers and mothers, born and liv- 
ing in countries and times which have their defi- 
nite demands upon us and interests for us, let us 
give ear to the resonance of those calls as well !" 

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They arose and walked to the side of the ship. 
And in this mood of confidence he gave her an 
account of his own struggles in solving this ques- 
tion of the choice of a life-vocation. 

What he did not explain to her, and could not 
have done, for it did not occur to him, was that he 
differed from her in that he was cast in a larger 
mould. The masculine vigour, the cardiac vitality, 
the fibre, the tissue of his will, of his character, 
were all more massive, of greater build, than were 
hers. It was not so much a question of intellect, 
it was almost the physical side of character, the 
dvfxosidh which corresponded to the greater 
physical strength of this man as compared with 
that woman. These were stronger and made him 
desire to be a great artist or none at all, because he 
was predestined to be a leader in what he took up, 
whether art, politics, business, or digging in 
mines. 

But now he told her how he had decided that, 
as in his painting the sense of colour and pure 
form were his strongest points, decorative art was 
more his sphere than picture-painting. And then 
came the suggestion of his father, and he at once 
realised how, in taking up the work in their mills, 
he could find a truly useful vocation, and one 
which would most completely bring out his quali- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ties. He told her of his plans, and she was moved 
in sympathetic enthusiasm to follow him in the 
prospect of work he had laid out for himself. 

And at last he confessed to her how his hap- 
piness had reached its climax when he realised the 
joy his decision had produced in his father and 
mother. He dwelt in self-reproach upon his 
neglect of them in all his previous life. How their 
very kindness, their undemonstrative self-efface- 
ment, had imperceptibly made him selfish. Such 
undemonstrative parents or wives produce the 
same results in those nearest them as, by opposi- 
tion, do those who are constantly exacting and 
demanding sacrifices. He had not realised before 
how they were longing quietly for some great 
manifestation on his part of his thought of them ; 
and how, by this one act of his, he had a revela- 
tion of all the possibilities before him of contrib- 
uting to their happiness and of entering into their 
lives. Surely, that was a great vocation as well! 

As he said this there was a tremor in his 
voice, and, calling her his dear friend, he had 
taken her hand. They stood by the ship's side. It 
was a starlit night as they glided through the 
black sea streaked with silver. They appeared al- 
most alone in this vast expanse with nothing but 
the sky and the sea and the stars. A wave of 
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gratitude and deep sadness gently stole over Ruth 
as she listened to his last words, and gazing out 
immovably over the sea, a tear rolled down her 
cheek. She withdrew her hand, murmured good- 
night, and left him. 



i8s 



CHAPTER XIII 

THAT night their ship sighted Fire Island 
Light House, and early in the morning they 
passed through the Narrows into New York 
Bay. 

Then the scene on deck and over the whole ship 
changed. There was brisk and hurried running 
to and fro among the passengers; their manner 
and their voices were altered from the languor- 
ous indifference of their sea habits to the brisk 
anticipation of all the excitement which awaited 
them on land. And as their manner, so their ap- 
pearance underwent a complete metamorphosis. 
Men appeared in very shiny new silk hats with 
light summer suits or heavy black coats; women 
who had looked dowdy and slovenly on board, 
wearing their oldest and often soiled sea-clothes, 
appeared in costly finery, with hats and lace and 
jewels which could not have merely been designed 
to impress or honour their friends and relations 
who came to meet them. One lady, who had put 
on a splendid sealskin cloak on a hot August day, 
for instance, must have had some other object in 
committing this solecism. 

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Then the doctor and the custom-house officials 
came on board, and the passengers were forced to 
wait their turn in the hot saloon while making 
their "declaration," the purport of which was en- 
tirely ignored in the subsequent searching exami- 
nation of all the luggage on shore. It was here 
that Van Zant could be of some service to Ruth, 
in occupying a place for her in the long file of im- 
patient passengers awaiting their turn with the 
custom-house officer. The Beeks fared well, for 
several friends had arrived on the custom-house 
boat and had made matters easy for them. 

In vain did Van Zant try to have a few quiet 
words with Ruth, but they could never be alone, 
nor was there a secluded spot on the ship. More- 
over, the whole atmosphere about them was unfa- 
vourable to a quiet and collected mood, and they 
were affected accordingly : their feelings and their 
manner were strikingly different from the previ- 
ous evening. He almost resented this, and he cer- 
tainly felt a soreness. 

He stood beside Ruth with the Sandemans and 
the Beeks as the huge ship, appearing colossal in 
proportion to the tiny tugs and other craft that 
flitted about them, slowly approached the pier, the 
end of which was packed with a dense crowd of peo- 
ple whose heads were bobbing about in eager 
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search for their friends on board. And as they 
drew nearer gestures and exclamations grew more 
definite and emphatic. Christian names, pet 
names, were shouted to and fro ; people on board 
and on shore were vainly trying to identify their 
friends, calling to them or pointing them out to 
the person beside them, impatient at their stupidity 
in not at once following their indications. There 
were anxious enquiries, reassuring answers, 
sometimes veiling a sadder truth which was subse- 
quently to be broken; jokes, sometimes witty, 
sometimes vulgar, always personal; laughter and 
tears — but joy predominating. It always remains 
an impressive scene of manifest human afifection 
and joy. Still, Van Zant reflected that it lacked 
the deep impressiveness and solemn dignity of a 
departure ; when the huge hulk, slowly and silently 
and relentlessly slides out into the distance, leav- 
ing a weeping and waving mass of fond friends 
standing on the shore and gradually dwindling 
out of sight, with the last flickering wave of a 
young girl's scarf and the dark, immovable dot be- 
side her which represents an old father near his 
grave who watches his boy depart, perhaps never to 
see him again with mortal eyes. Does this impress 
us more than the joyful arrival, because grief is 
always more dignified than joy, or because we are 

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so made that pity is easier to us than congratula- 
tion? 

Van Zant heard the familiar whistle which he 
and his brother had used when they were boys at 
home, and then he espied his brother in white flan- 
nels and straw hat standing far behind the crowd, 
where he could walk about. They waved their 
hands gleefully at one another. Near his brother, 
he noticed two old gentlemen dressed in dark 
clothes, one with white whiskers, looking in his 
direction. At that moment the older of the two, 
somewhat bent, but forcing himself to an erect 
posture, first raised his hat, smiling, and then 
gracefully kissed his hand towards them. He 
turned to Ruth, for he had felt her waving her 
veil a moment before, and he saw her staring at 
the old men, her face pale, her nostrils and lips 
quivering, and the tears rolling down her cheeks. 

And then, after the shouting of rough voices 
and the screeching and rumbling of machinery 
and ropes drawn taut, and the lowering of the 
gangway, there was a rushing and a crowding, 
kissing and shaking of hands, sobbing and laugh- 
ing. Then the luggage was massed on the wharf 
according to the initial letters of the passengers' 
names, and there followed all the confusion and 
vexation of identifying it and having it examined 
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by the custom-house officers. Considerable time 
elapsed before the baggage was all collected, and 
though the attention of passengers was distracted 
by the task of watching their own goods and chat- 
tels, there was time to exchange a few words. 

It was then that Van Zant, after a hearty greet- 
ing from his brother, approached Ruth, who was 
with her father and uncle. He presented his 
brother, and was in turn introduced to Mr. Ward 
and her uncle. Ruth mentioned to her father the 
great kindness which Van Zant had shown her on 
the voyage, and the old man smiled kindly, bowed, 
shook hands, and thanked him for his goodness 
to his daughter. A few further remarks were ex- 
changed, and he felt he ought to leave. 

It was all so formal, so cold. He could hardly 
realise that his friend's father should treat him so 
coldly and formally. They had drawn so near to 
one another, and it seemed almost incongruous 
that their relations should, as it were, assume that 
each belonged so much more, so exclusively, to 
them. But he had to return to his luggage. 

And when the examination was over, as he 
stood at the entrance to the pier, he saw Ruth 
entering a smart landau with the two gentlemen. 
She was evidently looking round among the peo- 
ple for some one, and then their eyes met and she 

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bowed and smiled towards him. He raised his hat, 
and then, with an uncontrollable impulse, he 
quietly kissed his hand to her. He could see a 
blush suffuse her face, as she drove off. 

He hoped nobody had seen him; but he heard 
the soft voice of Mrs. Sandeman by his side: 
"That was a dear girl!" 



igi 



BOOK II 



CHAPTER I 

RUTH did not return to Paris as she had orig- 
inally intended. She had put off her depar- 
ture from month to month. A whole year had 
passed since her voyage, and Christmas was ap- 
proaching. She had now definitely settled not to 
return to Europe. 

As a matter of fact, the decision, though not so 
clearly formulated in her mind, had come to her 
the very first evening after her return to her fa- 
ther's house. They had arrived in Boston so late 
that they had to spend the night there and could 
not continue their journey to Manchester-by-the- 
sea, where they lived in the summer, and where 
her mother was now awaiting her. 

Their old house on Beacon Street at first struck 
her as singularly and agreeably old-world in con- 
trast to the houses of New York, The streets 
themselves in their neighbourhood, and especially 
the view down Mount Vernon Street, with the 
strip of bay at the end, reminded her more of the 

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views in some old continental town in Europe than 
anything else in America. 

She felt this still more strongly when she en- 
tered the library. Drawing-room there was none 
in this town house. The usual folding doors sep- 
arating the front and back parlours of these Amer- 
ican houses had been removed, and thus made 
one large, irregular-shaped room, like a broad 
aisle with choir and transept, the walls of which 
were covered with book-cases, on the tops of 
which were vases, jars, bronzes, a few marble 
busts and some casts from antiques. It was only 
over the two mantelpieces that there were no book- 
cases, and here hung a Paul Veronese; while on 
the sides were two water-colour drawings by 
Turner with excellent early proofs from the Liber 
Studiorum. An ingenious device of old Mr. Ward 
to relieve these rooms of the monotony of walls 
entirely covered with books was, that he had 
fixed a few excellent pictures, one a portrait by a 
Venetian master, on the upright strips of the 
book-shelves by means of hinges, so that, while 
gratifying the eye by their own beauty, the pic- 
tures could be turned forward to get at the books 
behind them. The library itself was an exceed- 
ingly fine one and reflected the taste of its collec- 
tor, though many volumes had been amassed by 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

previous generations. Among them were a few 
exquisite illuminated manuscripts, as well as some 
fine specimens of early printing. Nothing that was 
there, however, owed its presence to the interest 
or passion of the collector ; it was not rarity or the 
completeness of the collection that was aimed at, 
but the satisfaction of the tastes, the intellectual 
and artistic interests, of the owners. 

Besides the two bedrooms occupied by Ruth 
and her father, this was the only room prepared 
for them by the old servant who guarded the 
house during the family's residence in the coun- 
try. Ruth and her father had just returned from 
the hotel where they had supped. He was smok- 
ing his cigar in the library before going to bed, 
and she had asked that she might sit with him. 

"But are you not tired, my dear Ruth?" Her 
father never used a pet name, however affectionate 
or coaxing his voice and manner might have been. 
"You have had a long journey and we must start 
early to-morrow morning ; for your mother is im- 
patiently awaiting you." 

"Oh, no, dear father, not at all. I want to sit 
with you and talk." She suddenly had the image 
of her mother before her, sitting up still in the 
country, alone in the house, impatiently awaiting 
the moment when she could hold her child in her 

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arms. "Tell me honestly, dear father, is mother 
quite well and strong, has she aged at all since 
last year?" 

"Well, for her years she is quite well and 
strong; though since she had the influenza last 
year, her nerves are not quite in good condition, 
and she is often depressed." 

"Why did you not let me know of her illness? 
I should have returned at once. It was wrong of 
you, father," Ruth said with reproach in her 
voice. "It is horrible to think that she had no one 
of her own people to nurse her." 

"She was well looked after, Ruth. We had an 
excellent professional nurse. There was no reason 
to worry you and to disturb your work. I 
should have cabled at once had things taken an un- 
favourable turn, and in fact I was on the point of 
doing it one day." 

There was a pause, during which Ruth sat look- 
ing fixedly before her. The thoughts were rush- 
ing through her brain ; and then in a softer voice 
she asked, 

"Have you not both of you often felt lonely, 
dear father, without your little girl ?" 

"Well, since your brother left for the West 
your mother has at times felt lonely, and the house 
seems somewhat desolate. But I have managed to 
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have people stay with us as often as possible ; and 
that always cheers her somewhat, though she does 
not realise it. At all events, it occupies her mind, 
which comes near to it. Of course we miss you, 
because we both love our little girl." 

Ruth got up hastily, and sat on the arm of the 
easy chair in which her father was sitting and put 
her arm round his neck, she pressed her cheek to 
his and said in a low pleading voice : 

"Tell me, daddie dear, do you think it right 
of me to be following my own life and pursuits 
far away from you, when you and mother are 
alone and lonely here?" 

Her father gently removed her arm from his 
neck, drew a chair near his facing him, softly 
pressed her into it close to him, and taking her 
hand, he said with slow deliberation : 

"My dear child, it is right for you to live your 
own life. This is not only a matter of general 
conviction on my part, but my personal experience 
has strengthened it into singular intensity. I have 
not told you much of my past life and my youth, 
my dear child, nor do I mean to enter into details. 
It is enough for me to tell you that I am con- 
vinced there would be more happiness in this 
world, less misery, and certainly less of the fric- 
tion which undermines peaceful and affectionate 

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relations, if people were allowed to go their own 
way and to find their happiness after their own 
methods. And I am especially assured of this in 
the relation of parents to their children. There is 
more hidden or disguised selfishness in the 
absorbing and exacting affection of good 
parents than most of them are aware of. This 
has spoiled many a life at the very period of 
its strongest growth and development, while 
it has certainly done more to weaken affec- 
tion and regard of children to their parents 
— nay, has even led to total estrangement — than 
even overt selfishness or indifference on the part 
of parents. 

"Why," he continued, and there was a touch 
of sad humour in his voice and a flitting smile 
passed over his face, "from the point of view of 
far-sighted and deliberate parental selfishness, I 
do not wish to call for continual sacrifices on the 
part of my children. I never want them to feel me 
in their way. I want them to think of me without 
any cramped feeling of duties towards me to be 
fulfilled in the future or unfulfilled in the past. 
My ambition — my pride and vanity if you like — 
is, that they should look upon my interest in them, 
my advice, my praise and reproof — my company, 
as a privilege accorded them, not as a burden to 
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be borne. No, my dear Ruth ; you must live your 
own life." 

And then he rose, drew her up and kissed her, 
while he said in a changed voice, "And now you 
must go to bed, and get up betimes to-morrow." 

Ruth kissed and clung to her father with more 
fervour than she had ever felt. It appeared to her 
that she had never loved him so dearly, that she 
had never understood him so well and respected 
him as much as at that moment. 

His words and his manner recurred to her, vi- 
brated on, as she lay in bed sleepless. Yes, there 
was much in what he had said, when said by him. 
But how about her own view of the matter, and 
how about her own life which she was to live? 
Had she the right to dissociate her life in this 
manner from that of her parents? Did not duty 
point towards them ; and was it not one of the 
important functions of her own life to live in 
theirs ? And if her taste did not point in this di- 
rection, was it not perverted, perverted by de- 
sires and ambitions which, by predisposition and 
talent, she was not likely to justify in achieve- 
ment? 

And rapidly and vaguely the mood evoked by 
her last talk with Van Zant, rather than the facts 
and details of it, came over her. She saw clearly 

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before her eyes the scenes during her mother's ill- 
ness, and she felt in her heart the distress of the 
mother longing to have her daughter beside 
her, the anguish lest she should die without see- 
ing her again. She lived through the lonely days 
when her mother sat, her needle-work on her lap, 
looking out into the distance and wondering how 
and where her child was at that moment, what 
she was doing, and fearing lest she should be in 
danger, moral or physical, and require her help. 
And then her sympathy led her to realise how the 
arch-enemy Fear, unreasonable, but overwhelm- 
ing all reason, taking hold of her mother's nerves 
and heart, when these were weakened in their 
normal function, produced in her a feverish anx- 
iety, amounting to anguish, which robbed her of 
all peace and sleep. 

And meanwhile her father, feeling all this 
himself, and shaken in his equanimity by the con- 
tagion of fear, at the same time was straining 
every nerve to restore his wife's peace of mind. 
He was bearing these sufferings in silence, 
no word passing his lips as to his own feel- 
ings, supported only in his efforts by the convic- 
tion that it was best for his girl to be separated 
from them, clinging, while remembering the suf- 
ferings of his own youth, to the resolve to spare 
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those dear to him from the same fate. Not a word 
had he ever uttered against his own parents; but 
she clearly felt that to them was to be ascribed the 
failure of her father's life, which might have con- 
centrated his many talents upon some great 
achievement, instead of allowing them to become 
attenuated and dissipated into amateurishness. 
His determination to allow his children to live 
their own lives was dogged and had become al- 
most a fixed idea. He encouraged her brother to 
exert his manly energy in the West, as he had 
allowed her to study art in Paris ; and meanwhile 
he devoted himself to the task of making her 
forget their absence. All this that she might lead 
her own life ! 

And what had her own life been, while her 
mother and father were silently suffering through 
her absence ? Did her inner aptitudes, her predes- 
tined inner powers, did the natural tastes, which 
as a woman she ought to have, justify all this 
sacrifice ? Had everything in life to make way for 
her as an artist, as would have been the case with 
a genius, or one upon whom devolved the task of 
supporting a family, or even himself, by the 
handiwork of his art? At all events, had her in- 
clinations to be followed so exclusively, that all 
other tastes and duties remained invisible, left be- 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

hind, or voluntarily shut out from the range of 
perception ? 

And strongly the contrast between the lonely 
life of her mother and the busy variety of her 
Paris days stood out in cruel glaringness. She 
blushed as she saw her mother sitting up or 
lying in bed in feverish anxiety for her welfare, 
while she was gadding about in ridiculous Bo- 
hemian jollity and sham dissipation. How 
thoughtless and selfish, and above all, how ridicu- 
lous and vulgar it all appeared when it presented 
itself to her against the background — within the 
general proportions — of her life and destiny as a 
woman and a daughter! 

How much and how often had she thought of 
her parents while she lived in Paris ? A bitterness 
against herself came over her when she began, 
with exaggerated mathematical precision, to com- 
pare the amount of thought which they had be- 
stowed upon one another. She felt sure that not 
a day passed in which her mother and father had 
not thought of her ; that in these days perhaps she 
was their first thought upon awaking, and that 
there were many hours each day in which they 
lived in imagination and sympathy in her life. 
Whereas days and weeks passed in which her par- 
ents had hardly occurred to her, and then only 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

while she was writing to them, when some direct 
association of ideas recalled them, or when she 
required them to reflect in imagination her joy 
or sorrow, pride or humiliation in the heart's need 
for sympathy. It was then that her ingratitude, 
selfishness and hardness came before her in 
hideous nakedness, and she despised herself. 

Yet herein Ruth was wrong and unjust to her- 
self. Hers was the active, eager life of youth, full, 
of movement, work, definite outer tasks and inter- 
ests — a future to fashion and to create; theirs 
was the more passive, contemplative life of old 
age, which gains and absorbs pulsating vitality 
and interest in living in the activity of the young 
they love. 

But there is an unspeakable sadness in this dis- 
proportion between the thought and affection be- 
stowed by parents upon children and the response 
which the young make to it. In the life-giving 
world of Love, which the ancient Greeks recognised 
as the generating and moving principle of the uni- 
verse, bestowing vitality and energy upon all 
things, there must be this disproportion, this over- 
weighting on the one side of the scales; for it 
would mean stagnation were they equally bal- 
anced. There must be a surplusage of love from 
the old to the young, of parents to children ; for 

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the children again must be striving on in search 
of that which is to absorb their heart; and this 
very search is the pulse of life and energy — the 
eye and the heart must strain forward. A life like 
Ruth's, that of a young person who was in the 
crisis of development, must be absorbed chiefly by 
the tasks and interests, the desires and passions, 
which lie without and are not reflective and con- 
templative: the powers within must be realised 
without, and this projection of self does not mean 
selfishness. But if such is the great course of the 
universe, it remains none the less sad that children 
should only be able to return in thin streamlets 
and drops the constant and full current of affec- 
tion which flows to them from their parents. 

But Ruth felt the bitterness against herself and 
her past Paris life; and before she fell to sleep 
that first night in her father's house, she prac- 
tically determined not to return to Paris. When- 
ever her father broached the subject and urged 
her not to remain away from her work on their 
account, she put off her departure from month 
to month on some pretext or other, until a whole 
year had passed. She had now come to a clear 
understanding with her father. They decided to 
go to Europe together the following spring, and 
while her parents visited a German watering 
203 



WHAT MAY WE READ> 

place In the summer she was to remain in Paris 
until they joined her again in the autumn and 
winter. The affectionate attention she lavished 
upon her mother and father had a marked effect 
upon their happiness, and brought its recoil in her 
own soul, filling her days with an intense, yet 
peaceful satisfaction which she had never ex- 
perienced before. 

But meanwhile she did not neglect her painting. 
She had even to admit to herself, when she com- 
pared her efforts month by month, that there was 
recognisable progress. She began to realise that 
figure-painting would never be her forte, though 
a portrait she made of her father was well noticed 
by the press when exhibited. Her talent lay more 
in the direction of landscape and marine scenery. 
In her summer home on the coast she delighted in 
the endless variety of effects in the sea and the 
shore, the changes of sky and light, and the many 
problems of colour, design and tone which they 
presented. Meanwhile, she knew from her French 
masters that the human figure and the nude al- 
ways remain the best schooling for every variety 
of drawing and painting, and she found abundant 
facilities for carrying on such work in Boston. 
Besides the schools which she visited occasionally, 
she formed a small association with several other 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

artists, women where, in a large studio, they 
provided their own models and arranged 
with two of the leading resident artists 
to pay weekly visits for criticism and di- 
rection. 

Her training in the Paris schools gave her a po- 
sition of eminence in this association, and she was 
hardly aware of her changed attitude of mind. For 
she appeared to herself one of the now 'old ones.' 
She looked with tolerance and some compassion 
upon the immature cultivation of Bohemian eccen- 
tricities in some of her artist-friends, which she had 
revelled in with absorbing zest while she was in 
Paris. 

The more she worked at her painting and the 
more she accomplished, the more time she seemed 
to have for other occupation. The attention she 
paid to her parents seemed in no way to interfere 
with her work; she could assist her mother in 
the household, and duties which before she had 
shrunk from and despised were now a pleasure to 
her. 

She even looked about for new tasks. When in 
the country she took active interest in providing 
recreation for children, not only children from 
the neighbourhood of Manchester, but, in co- 
operation with a movement headed by a young 

20S 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

man in Boston, little boys and girls of the 
poor city population. The clay's outing which 
they thus organised consisted of games and ex- 
cursions in the fields and sailing on the sea. She 
took real delight in this ; for she did not feel her- 
self drawn to charitable work which is more mani- 
fest, i.e., in doling out alms to paupers and in- 
valids. 

With all this, she was herself astonished to find 
how much greater pleasure she found in the fa- 
miliar social amusements of her native town than 
had been the case when she was much younger. 
She was able to discern interesting features in 
the people who formed her father's circle, so that 
she took real delight in their company and con- 
versation. Even the young people, with their 
dances and country parties, their gatherings for 
intellectual improvement and discussion had 
a freshness and enthusiasm coupled with a moral 
cleanliness, which exercised a great fascination 
over her. She entered into the life of these 
people, most of them younger and more inexperi- 
enced than herself, with a zest which was not only 
evoked by sympathy, but came from the actual 
youth in her and her healthy joie de vivre. 

The young women whom she saw most of gen- 
erally had some intellectual and artistic interest in 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

common with her. But, more than hi the earHer 
days, did she find pleasure in the society of men. 
Among these were some artists, or men engaged 
in some form of pubHc or charitable work which 
led to their meeting. On the other hand, much 
younger men, younger than herself, who had no 
manifest serious interest of this kind, cheerful 
and healthy boys, fine dancers and keen sports- 
men, with good manners, a fund of high spirits — 
and all with a great admiration for her — seemed 
to please her even more than the more serious 
men. But neither of the two categories could 
take a firm and lasting hold on her imagina- 
tion and interest, each seemed to be wanting in 
something which her nature appeared to re- 
quire. 

As a matter of fact her memory often 
took back to the friend whom she had met 
on her last voyage and who had taken so 
firm a hold of her thoughts — of her life. At 
first it was more the topics they had touched 
upon and the views and thoughts he had ex- 
pressed which led her constantly to dwell upon the 
incidents of that sea-trip. The whole intellectual 
atmosphere of the voyage and of the discussions 
she had had with Van Zant seemed to penetrate 
her nature, her mental habit, and gave her a new 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

way of looking at things. She seemed to under- 
stand her father better; and in the talks she had 
with him, much more frequent and delightfully- 
intimate than they had been in previous years, she 
would not only quote Van Zant, but would often 
supply what she thought he would have said by 
a phrase like — "I am sure Mr. Van Zant would 
have answered you ..." Her father seemed 
quite familiar with Van Zant and would, with 
good-humoured chaff, refer to him as "Your 
wise Friend." 

But a personality that was so near to her, and 
had become in a way a part of her, was at first not 
recognised as a personality at all. She was quite 
content that the person should vanish from her 
mind, however much he seemed to enter into 
her life. She seemed satisfied that he should re- 
main a creature of memory and of imagination, 
however vivid he was as such. For again and 
again, in whatever she did and undertook, she 
imagined his presence and gauged what effect 
her actions and decisions would have had upon 
him. And when she had clearly resolved not to 
return to Paris, he was the active spectator and 
approver of her resolution, if not a chief agent 
in urging her on to that decision. 

But this state of her mind did not last ; and the 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

reality forced itself upon her life of pure imagina- 
tion as far as Van Zant was concerned. The 
change must have come about suddenly. It prob- 
ably came during the late spring of the year fol- 
lowing her return, when her brother had come 
from the West on a visit. 

In the course of conversation with him she had 
casually mentioned Van Zant's name, whereupon 
her brother remembered his being at Harvard 
with him. He had not known him personally ; 
for Van Zant had just entered his senior year 
when he had come up as a Freshman. He had 
been "far too great a person for him to meet at 
that time"; for he had been one of the most popular 
men in the University, a member of the Hasty 
Pudding Club, who rowed in the Varsity Boat, 
besides being in the football and baseball teams. 
As far as he could remember he struck him as 
being "pretty wild" in those days, rather "a hard 
case," he should have said. 

To hear of him thus from her brother, and in 
this absolutely new tone and aspect, produced a 
curious impression upon Ruth. It all tended to 
break through her web of imagination and to 
bring him back to her in flesh and blood. She 
began to inquire eagerly for further information, 
but her brother could give her none. 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

From that time on she began to think of 
Van Zant more frequently and in a different 
manner. She wondered why she had not heard 
from him, or met him again, and tried 
to imagine the kind of Hfe he was leading. No 
doubt he would be in New York a great deal, 
and would take part in the social whirl and dis- 
sipation of the Metropolis. In looking over 
the morning papers, her eyes would now 
turn to the New York letter giving para- 
graphs of the fashionable entertainments there; 
and, curiously enough, she one day hit upon 
his name among a number of others men- 
tioned as being at one of the fashionable 
dances. 

A kind of resentment crept over her, somewhat 
similar to the feeling he had evoked in her when 
first she saw him on the steamer and before she 
had made his personal acquaintance. He had 
probably forgotten all about her. The mood and 
the atmosphere of serious and deep thought and 
lofty principles had been shaken off by him the 
moment he entered the scented atmosphere of the 
New York drawing-rooms. The other side in 
him, which he had endeavoured to suggest to her, 
was probably now predominant; and perhaps he 
laughed at himself for having taken her and him- 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

self and all they talked of so seriously when on 
the steamer. 

Her more critical observation of many earnest 
and original young ladies, whom she had seen in 
Boston, made her alive to the weaknesses and the 
comic aspect of many traits in them, as well as 
the seriousness with which they took themselves ; 
and she felt sure she must have cut the same figure 
before him. When she realised this a great resent- 
ment rose up in her, and she felt like stamping 
her foot with impotent irritation. 

But there were other more mellow moments 
in which she thought of him quite dififerently. She 
almost saw the expression of his face and heard 
the soft vibration of his deep voice as, moved by 
true and sincere emotion, he confided to her what 
appeared to be the very foundation of his life 
and aspirations. He then spoke of things with a 
fervour which could be as little feigned as it could 
be but the passing thought of a moment, flitting 
along the surface of the brain without lasting 
relation to the wholeness of his life. 

Between these two conceptions of him, and the 
moods which they evoked in her, she vacillated 
as with increasing frequence and continousness, 
she thought of her friend. So frequent and te- 
nacious were these thoughts that, when she 

211 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

realised how difficult it would be for him to com- 
municate with her, she had one day resolved to 
write to him. But a powerful instinct arose 
within her and checked this impulse whenever it 
made itself felt. 

She could not, however, believe that these 
thoughts of a chance acquaintance could in any- 
way be accountable for another change which 
came over her while she was in the country. 
This was a growing feeling of restlessness 
and a vague discontent, coupled with a shrink- 
ing from being alone. Of this latter experi- 
ence she was quite unconscious; for she imag- 
ined that she was singularly free from dependence 
upon company, and that she enjoyed nothing 
more than being left to herself without fear of 
intrusion or interruption. She believed this so 
much that she could not regard, with either sym- 
pathy or tolerance, the constant craving for com- 
pany and social chatter which she remarked in so 
many of her friends and which seemed to point to 
an education fundamentally wrong and ineffec- 
tual. But this restless state and this distate of 
aloneness grew in her gradually, and she was 
shocked to find that one day she was quite mis- 
erable when left by herself, after she had been 
looking forward to this experience with pleasure 
for many days. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

It was toward the end of October, while in their 
beautiful country house at Pride's Crossing, that 
her parents had left for a few days on a visit to 
some relations, and that no guests were staying 
in the house. She had met their counsel to invite 
some of her own friends to stay with her during 
their absence, so that she should not be alone, by 
the assurance, "that a few days' of absolute repose 
pose was what she needed most at that mo- 
ment; that she had a great many things 
to do, and that she should enjoy being 
alone" — and she checked herself in time from 
insisting too much upon the delight at being 
forsaken by them, by adding with a smile — "to 
prepare her for the pleasure of having them back 
again." 

In all of this she was quite sincere, and it would 
certainly have been true of her some months be- 
fore. 

But when she found herself alone in the house, 
had prepared her easel, her canvas and her 
brushes in her little studio, had looked over and 
sorted her letters and laid out in order all those 
she meant to answer without haste, and had se- 
lected the books she had put by for days of com- 
plete quiet — she found that not one of these tasks 
could hold her attention for any time. She be- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

gan to think of the visits among the poor people 
which she might pay, yet which naturally came 
into the ordinary routine of her life when her 
parents were there, and even when guests were 
m the house. 

And when these visits were paid, she found 
herself strolling about in the garden, wasting the 
time of the gardener with inept directions and 
pointless questions; and, after wandering about 
the house, which appeared singularly still and 
forsaken, she gave up painting, as the light ap- 
peared too bad, and forced herself to settle down 
with a book in her boudoir which faced the sea. But 
every now and then she would interrupt her read- 
ing and would go to the window and look out over 
the water in listless contemplation of its vastness. 

Nor was there any charm in having a little din- 
ner prettily served in her own boudoir, which had 
delighted her on previous occasions. And when 
the evening wore away and the night drew on, 
she dreaded the coming days and longed for her 
parents' return. 

She, who never knew what ill health was, be- 
gan to fear that her discomfort might mean the 
beginning of some illness, for she lay sleepless in 
bed that night, tossing about and unable to col- 
lect her thoughts; and as the hours wore on this 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

State of feverish tension grew to such a pitch that 
she got up out of bed. 

She opened the window and allowed the fresh 
night air to play about her brow, and the calm- 
ness of the night at once soothed her fluttering 
spirit, A strip of garden lay below her feet ; dark 
masses of blue-black shadow with only a glint 
here and there on shiny leaves as the moon, her- 
self invisible, touched them from the side. But 
below and beyond came a brighter stretch of 
beach, upon which the breakers, in slow and reg- 
ular roll, encroached and receded in lullaby 
rhythm, trailing her fleeting thoughts with them 
mto dreamy peace. And as the moon sent her 
rays through riven clouds over the far expanse of 
the sea, with long silver streaks bordered by the 
mass of water, dark blue and inky black, her 
spirit was gently drawn out and on by these bright 
rivulets, until they were lost in the wide expanse 
of night. The gentle sound of waves within the 
stillness, the mystic light within the darkness, all 
lapped her thoughts into a shadowy vagueness, 
until they merged into one mysterious feeling 
which spread over her slowly and softly as the 
rollers advanced caressingly on the beach. This 
wave of gentle emotion rose to her heart, and 
swelled her breast till it expanded in its maiden 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

fulness, and, bending out into the night, she raised 
her arms to the sea, and, with a sigh of yearning, 
she crossed them over her breast and pressed them 
there. . . . 

The day preceding her parents' departure a 
worldly and beautiful neighbour had paid them 
a visit. She was a woman much admired by 
men, sprightly and a good talker, cultured 
and of extensive, if not deep, reading. She 
was considered one of the best dressed women of 
Boston, had travelled much, and had seen much. 
Some severer people did not approve of Mrs. Ack- 
land; for she made a point of seeking her pleas- 
ure in places and at times which did not suit 
Mr. Ackland, so that the two were rarely seen to- 
gether. In fact, some people considered her 
"fast." 

But Ruth delighted in her. She admired her 
beauty and her grace, and even her eccentricities, 
candidly and without reserve; the air of the dis- 
tant world which emanated from her pleased her 
as the perfume of some rare flower. The whole 
personality had an intense fascination for her. In 
intellectual and artistic taste, moreover, Ruth and 
she had found many points of contact. On one or 
two rare occasions Mrs. Ackland's impulsive 
and demonstrative nature had led her to con- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

fide in her younger companion, as few of her 
friends had done; and Ruth then discerned 
depths, as well as delicacies, of feeling, with a 
touch of pathos in her past history, which con- 
verted her sympathy into more than mere amuse- 
ment or interest in this personality. Ruth had 
several times found herself in the position of 
apologist and champion of this woman of fashion, 
when the talk of her more serious or severe 
friends turned upon Mrs. Ackland. 

On the day of her visit, Mrs. Ackland had just 
returned from Lenox and seemed to bring with 
her all the subtle and joyous buoyancy of that gay 
and fashionable centre. She gave an account of 
the good time she had had there, and suddenly 
interrupted her prattle by turning to Ruth and 
saying: "Oh, I had almost forgotten the chief 
thing I wanted to tell you. I met a great friend 
and admirer of yours at Lenox — suqh a charming 
man ! Most of the Lenox women are in love with 
him, and I am among their number. He is too 
serious for them — not for me — though he is such 
a good dancer. But he seemed rather bored and 
told me he was going to leave the day after I last 
saw him. I do not know how we came to speak 
of you. — Yes, I think it was he who asked 
whether I knew you. When I said I did, and that 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

you were a great friend of mine, and that I hoped 
to see you in a few days, he gave a start. But 
he seemed to recover himself at once, and said he 
thought you had returned to Paris many months 
ago. He then said, very directly and seriously, 
that he admired you much. Those were the very 
words he used, but I cannot give his accent ; there 
was something so emphatic and convincing about 
his 'much.' And then he began to inquire about 
you — not indiscreetly, and listened intently all 
the while I was talking about you — much more 
than he had done when I was talking about my- 
self. And he wanted to know what you did, and 
where you lived, and he took down your address 
in Boston, And when we parted, I must tell you 
that he said he hoped he might call upon me when 
in Boston this winter — having quite forgotten 
that, but half an hour before, when I had asked 
whether I should see him in Boston, he had said 
that he would be kept hard at work at their silk 
works in Connecticut all the winter and that he 
could hardly hope for a holiday." 



2l8 



CHAPTER II 

MEANWHILE Van Zant's experience during 
the summer months of the year following 
the sea-voyage had not been very different from 
that of Ruth — in fact, in some respects, it had 
been very similar. 

During the winter and spring his mind had 
been so fully occupied with the new life into which 
he had entered and the work he had undertaken, 
that all his energies were absorbed, and there was 
not much time for reflection or sentiment. 

He lived a secluded life in the small Connecti- 
cut town where they had their silk mills, his 
brother and he keeping house together in a bach- 
elor's home, which they made as comfortable as 
such homes can be. He saw no company there, 
nor had he even much time for reading. For he 
found the work in the factory so engrossing that 
it kept him busy all day long, and what time he 
had to spare in the evening was devoted to the 
elaboration of new plans and the preparation of 
new work for the morrow. 

He had at once discovered that the methods of 
weaving employed in their factory were anti- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

quated, that an old routine was clung to through- 
out, and that the distribution of labour and 
the discipline among the labourers were irra- 
tional and lax. It required much tact and per- 
sistence on his part to introduce new machinery 
and to alter the established organisation of work. 
But during the first winter he succeeded in carry- 
ing his points, and the advantages made them- 
selves felt so rapidly, that he at once took a prom- 
inent position among the managers and directors, 
and was allowed a free hand to inaugurate any re- 
forms he chose. 

While thus directing his attention chiefly to the 
practical and commercial side of manufacture, 
he found time, and obtained permission, to estab- 
lish a small special department of his own, in 
which he began the manufacture of silks and bro- 
cades with truly artistic designs made by himself. 
The work in this department took the place of 
relaxation and amusement; and in addition to 
the satisfaction in the work itself, he had the tri- 
umph of attracting the notice of artists and peo- 
ple of taste, and, through them, of the press and 
the public, by some brocades which he sent to the 
Arts and Crafts Exhibition in New York. This 
was not only a triumph over the practical men in 
the factory, who had shaken their heads skepti- 

220 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

cally when they allowed him to have his own way 
in this matter, but it looked as if he might actu- 
ally create a new demand in the market by the 
supply of goods of such superior quality. 

While thus paying due regard to the immediate 
practical requirements of the business for which 
He was responsible, in supplying the existing de- 
mand within the limits of cheapness and quality, 
he had the gratification of actually verifying one 
of his favourite economic theories, which was 
that, not only art, literature and science, but even 
business and industry of the higher order, had 
among their social functions the one of creating 
a demand for that which the conscientious and 
able producer deemed a good and desirable arti- 
cle — to lead and guide public opinion and tastes, 
not only to follow and to satisfy them. 

Another theory which he clung to concerned 
the responsibility of the employer to his work- 
men and his duty to further their physical and 
moral welfare. Yet in living up to his convictions 
in this sphere he at first encountered difficulties, 
which were due to the fact that he could not hit it 
off with the people about him — not so much the 
workmen themselves as the men who held su- 
perior positions in the works and the other people 
with whom he had to associate in his home. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

This failure he soon discovered was due to the 
foreign manners which he had acquired during 
his long stay abroad. But he soon found 
that it was not only a question of manners, but 
a question of tastes underlying them, which again 
were based upon fixed standards; and these 
standards had become stereotyped and narrowly 
exclusive in him. His brother, who was a healthy, 
muscular type of the American University man, 
who had thrown himself vigorously into the ac- 
tive life of business in his country and had never 
allowed himself to be affected by foreign cus- 
toms, soon made it clear to him that he was on the 
wrong tack and would have to reform, 

"You can't get on with these people here, 
George," he had said in his straightforward, 
jovial way. "And if I were one of them I would 
not let you get on. You must come off that 
perch ! Climb down, old man ! They won't stand 
it," 

"I will climb down as much as you like," Van 
Zant had answered, "if you will tell me how I am 
to do it. I am sure I try my best." 

"No you don't. You've always got an air of 
superiority. I even feel it myself. Your man- 
ners may be better than ours, and the things you 
care for most may be better than the things we 

222 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

care for. But if you make us feel this we don't 
like you the more for it." 

"Why shouldn't you all take me as I am, as I 
am quite willing to take you as you are?" Van 
Zant had replied with some querulousness in his 
voice. "Why should I alter my whole nature and 
being? I am made that way. ..." 

"Rats! Don't tell me that, George! You once 
told me long ago when I saw you in Europe that 
I should not be so friendly with the English peo- 
ple I met, and that you yourself had to alter your 
habit of cordiality when you were living in Eng- 
land, because the people there didn't understand 
it. Now cordiality is decidedly a good thing. 
But you gave it up and adapted yourself to their 
ways. Why not do it here now ? It is well worth 
it if you want to live and work among us." 

His brother's words had a great effect upon 
him and set him thinking a good deal on com- 
parative manners. He no longer observed the 
people with an initial readiness to criticise, but 
rather with a sympathetic willingness to make the 
best of them, and to account for their peculiari- 
ties by the conditions under which they lived. 
And he thus even began to admire what before 
had startled or shocked him. Having altered 
his basis of observation and judgment in the di- 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

rection of sympathy, the rest followed spontane- 
ously and naturally, and he soon began to make 
way with his men. 

The work he did in the organisation of the 
Working Men's Club and Library, as well as the 
lectures he gave with magic-lantern illustrations 
on foreign travel, sites and works of art, began 
to be more frequented and almost popular. But 
his real success did not begin until during the late 
spring. 

He had taken an active part in training both 
the football and baseball teams, and in arranging 
for matches with neighbouring towns and clubs. 
Not only did his prominence here — a revival of 
his prowess in undergraduate days — stand him in 
good stead, to make him the friend and hero of his 
own men ; but in the free and democratic atmos- 
phere of all sport and athletics, his own manner 
lost all embarrassment and reserve, and his native 
amiability made itself felt and won over even 
those who had at first been opposed to him. 

Social pleasures among his equals he had 
hardly found time for during this period. He 
had paid a few visits to New York during the 
winter and spring and had been well received 
there by his own friends and connections, and had 
been asked to dinners and balls. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

But here his power of adaptation forsook him 
for the nonce. Nor did he think it necessary to 
make the effort which had led to success in his 
deahngs with workmen and business connections. 
His analytical, comparative and critical bias made 
itself felt when testing the social amusements of 
his native metropolis. And though he did not 
disapprove of its society actively, nor detract from 
it in thought or word, it failed to attract or amuse 
him. 

It all struck him as fundamentally amiable, 
and even affable, in character ; yet pervaded by a 
tone of immaturity and crudeness which at once 
struck him as the most prominent characteristic. 
There was an intentionality, a business-like en- 
ergy put into everything which these highly 
strung people undertook that robbed their social 
life of repose, sometimes of dignity, and made 
him feel — whether at a literary gathering of men 
in a club or an intellectual circle in a fashionable 
house or at a great dinner or ball — that the peo- 
ple concerned meant to do the thing well and 
were always manifestly conscious of this en- 
deavour and exertion. Dinners, balls, private 
theatricals or historical fancy-dress entertain- 
ments seemed to manifest the purpose "to break 
the record" in each one of these departments. 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

The very freshness and vigour, the bubbling 
over of breezy vitaHty, thus carried into the life 
of social relaxation, whatever undoubted merits it 
might point to, failed to provide him with social 
recreation after his work and did not attract him. 

Moreover, search as he would, he could not find 
in this great city a circle or set which had crys- 
tallised into complete harmony of interests and 
tastes. The people all seemed to be thrown to- 
gether fortuitously, and time was not given for 
them to settle down into the residuum of repose- 
ful understanding. 

When he realised that he was thus not at one 
with the people among whom his lot was cast and 
that after his work was done there was not much 
for him to look to in the way of relaxation 
and enjoyment, a great sadness came over 
him and he felt a depression which he could only 
shake off when absorbed in the work of the fac- 
tory. 

In these moments he would revert, not so much 
to the memory of his years in Europe, but to the 
last intermediary link between his present and his 
past life, namely the sea-voyage and the young 
girl who was the chief figure in those scenes. He 
felt that he had been unjust to her, and that after 
all, she had been right in feeling that her artistic 
226 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

nature and her higher aspirations could not de- 
velop and flourish in the atmosphere of their na- 
tive home. He wondered how she was faring af- 
ter her return to Paris and almost envied her the 
interesting life she was leading there. He even 
began to dream of taking his first holiday in a 
run over to Paris, and of hunting her up there, 
and of renewing an acquaintance which had left 
an interest in him, deeper and more lasting than 
any he had ever experienced before. 

No doubt the immediate incentive to these 
thoughts of Ruth was given when he spent a de- 
lightful evening dining with the Sandemans, who, 
unfortunately for him, had not remained long in 
New York. Mrs. Sandeman had, without undue 
emphasis, recalled the incidents of the sea-voyage 
and had dwelt admiringly upon the picture of 
"that sweet girl." She seemed surprised when 
her inquiry about her met with Van Zant's an- 
swer that "he had never heard of her again." 
Later in the evening she remarked in a general 
way that she could not understand the young- 
men of to-day, to whom it never seemed to occur 
that the chance of winning the greatest prize in 
life, the affections of a noble woman, was worth 
any effort. And the gentle old lady fell into a 
tone of bitter combativeness and ironical resent- 

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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

ment as she said: ''They read sympathetically of 
the fate of Troy hanging by the eyelashes of 
Helen, of savages slaughtering each other for a 
woman, of Romeo stealing into the house of the 
Capulets by a silk ladder — and they never dream 
that it is worth while to give up a business en- 
gagement in order to see the woman for whom 
their soul is pining." 

As the summer wore on, and after the first 
burst of energy in his organising work had spent 
itself, he had more leisure to live in his own 
thoughts. The restlessness and dissatisfaction, 
the craving for genial company and the response 
and sympathy, which even the most self-centred 
among us require, became stronger and more 
clamorous. And in these moods the thought of 
Ruth presented itself more and more vividly, and 
the desire to meet her again became more per- 
sistent. When the day's work was over and the 
workmen's club was deserted in the summer even- 
ings, so that there was no occupation for him 
there, he found the nights very lonely in his bach- 
elor home. His brother, who delighted in com- 
pany of any kind, generally left him to himself. 
It was then that his old enemies, depression and 
weariness of self, which had tortured him so per- 
sistently when he was struggling to find the real 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

bearings of his life-work in previous years, har- 
assed him again. 

But his despondency was of a different order 
from what it had been. He was, on the whole, 
satisfied with his work, and was happy with that 
side of his life. The conflict was not confined to 
the forces within his own breast, creating a tur- 
moil there that robbed him of inner peace, and 
shut out in its gloom all the brighter light of the 
world without. But in these moments all the 
forces of his soul combined seemed to make for, 
and yearn for, something outside himself, where 
the struggle of active life should end in peace and 
the soul should drink its joy and expand with- 
out struggle. 

Still he stuck to his work, while his brother 
and the other managers took their holiday, during 
all the heat of the summer and early autumn, and 
it was only at the end of October that he accepted 
an invitation to stay with some friends at Lenox. 

It was here that he met Mrs. Ackland and 
heard from her that Ruth had not returned to 
Paris and that she would spend the winter in her 
Boston home. The thrill which l.e experienced 
when he heard this news, the eagerness with 
which he listened to the enthusiastic praise which 
this sprightly lady of the world bestowed upon his 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

friend, and the great effort of restraint it cost him 
not to ply her with question after question in 
eager urgency, revealed to him that evening how 
deep was his admiration for his ocean friend and 
how strong a hold she had upon him. 

From that day the thought of her hardly left 
him; and upon his return to the factory, he 
worked on feverishly until the day should arrive 
when he would be allowed to take a long Christ- 
mas holiday, which he decided to spend in Boston, 

Thus it was that, about the middle of Decem- 
ber, when Ruth and her parents were well estab- 
lished in their Boston home, they found, upon re- 
turning in the afternoon, the cards of George 
Van Zant, who was staying at the Brunswick. 

Fortunately for Ruth, she was standing in the 
shadow of the door, her parents having passed 
before her, when her father read out the name 
from the card on the hall table, and, after an ex- 
clamation of pleased surprise shouted, "Why! 
Here is the great man at last ! I feel as if I had 
known him for years. I shall return his call to- 
morrow morning and shall ask him to dine with 
us in the evening. Don't you think we ought, 
Ruth?" 



230 



CHAPTER III 

WHEN the two friends met, it was in the 
drawing-room of the Beacon Street house, 
in the presence of her parents ; and though, as they 
stood looking into each other's eyes with hands 
clasped, the fact that they were not done forced 
them to moderate the warmth of their greeting, on 
the other hand, it helped them over the moment 
which they both had been looking forward to so 
eagerly and the significance of which they feared 
to show in its full depth. 

Ruth had undoubtedly changed most; and as 
her eyes shone upon him with an expression of 
unalloyed joy and the colour rose to her face, he 
was delighted to find how much younger and 
fresher she looked than on the sea voyage, and 
how all the traces of the restless worry which gave 
a worn expression to the lines about her mouth 
and cheeks had completely vanished. Her face 
and figure, her movements and her whole bearing 
were not only more womanly, but decidedly more 
girlish. This impression was no doubt heightened 
by the fact of her being with her parents, to whom 
she showed a marked filial tenderness and 
deference. 

231 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

Ruth passed through some moments of expec- 
tant anxiety, which we all feel when our friends 
for the first time meet those near to us — the hope 
that they should like one another, and the trepida- 
tion lest they should mar and vitiate the established 
relation we hold to our friends by manifesting dis- 
approval or antagonism. It was only for a few 
moments that she felt this ; for it was delightful to 
see how soon and how completely Van Zant came 
to an understanding with her parents, all of them 
clearly manifesting how favourably they were 
impressed with one another. 

To her mother he showed chivalrous deference, 
and throughout the evening made her the chief 
centre of his attentions ; so that the reserved and 
rather shy lady, who usually had not much to say 
for herself — in fact, in the presence of her su- 
perior husband and daughter generally was more 
passive and silent — really blossomed out into a 
vivacity and loquaciousness which father and 
daughter had rarely noticed in her before. And 
Ruth felt grateful to Van Zant for his success in 
this direction and for the effort which led to it, 
especially as it in no way appeared an effort to 
him. 

With her father he at once established com- 
plete understanding; and she could herself see 
232 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

how it required no effort whatever on his part 
and how congenial to him were the thoughts and 
views, the tastes and preferences, in fact, the 
whole personality of her father. The evening 
was passed in a continuous series of pleasant 
meetings on common grounds of interest and in 
the exchange of views and experiences that each 
was glad to give or to receive. From the begin- 
ning of dinner to the talk round the fire in the 
drawing-room, until at last Mr. Ward saw his 
guest out at the door, the two men were brought 
nearer toward an intimacy which each confidently 
hoped for and felt sure would come. 

When their guest had left, her mother as well 
as her father lavished praises upon him. There 
was a recapitulation of the qualities in Van Zant 
she knew so well, and the knowledge of which 
she was delighted to have confirmed by others. 
She felt gratitude to her parents for perceiving 
them as well as to Van Zant for possessing 
them. 

Mr. Ward had offered Van Zant the hospital- 
ity of his house, and had invited him to stay with 
them. But when the young man said that he was 
comfortably established at the hotel, he did not 
press his invitation further than to urge that, 
while living at the hotel, he hoped he would make 
233 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

their house his home for the time being, and 
would come in to meals whenever it suited him, 
looking upon himself as if he were a guest stay- 
ing in the house. This Van Zant gratefully ac- 
cepted; and from that day he spent most of his 
time with the Wards. He was not only enchanted 
with all the members of the family, but their cir- 
cle of friends as well. The whole social atmos- 
phere surrounding them struck a resonant fibre 
in him and satisfied the craving for congenial 
company which had remained unassuaged for 
more than a year. 

If Ruth felt that their friendship had entered 
on a new phase of intimacy, that it had become 
more domestic and firmly fixed in character, she, 
on the other hand, missed that fresh and unre- 
served spirit of camaraderie which, during their 
voyage, had led them together into discussions of 
the things in life which appeared most important 
to them. She was longing to have another good 
continuous talk such as they had had while seated 
in their deck chairs on the Majestic. But this 
could not well be. Van Zant's whole attitude 
with regard to her had undergone a change. For 
he had become conscious of the deep impression 
she was making upon him, so that her personality 
•preoccupied his thoughts and did not allow of 

234 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

clear and dispassionate dwelling upon im- 
personal matters. The more Ruth as a girl fas- 
cinated him, the more did he lose the control of 
the maturer side of his nature, and the more 
did he return to the earlier stage of eager boy- 
hood which comes to every man when love be- 
gins. 

He felt this most strongly when once he had 
accompanied Ruth to a dance. He then experi- 
enced both the delight and pain, belonging by 
rights to our earlier years, which in similar cir- 
cumstances robs every man of his equanimity and 
makes it difficult to retain the dignity befitting 
his maturer age. After the inebriating joy of his 
first waltz with her, a gloom, growing into actual 
torture, came over him as he watched her dancing 
with other men; and his critical habit of self-an- 
alysis made him compare himself with those fine 
young fellows in the first flush of vigorous man- 
hood with whom she seemed to enjoy her dances 
so keenly, and who seemed so much more in har- 
mony with her maidenly grace and freshness than 
he, at that moment, with his heavy heart and 
and weary brain. And as he recognised this, 
an undefined sense, like a band of jealousy, 
was woven round his heart and compressed 
its beating. And when Ruth came to him in 
235 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

triumphant and generous brightness, and asked 
him whether he would not like another dance, he 
pleaded fatigue, though he was longing for an- 
other turn, and resented the readiness with which 
she accepted the invitation of the slim young part- 
ner on whose arm she had come to him. It 
caused him a supreme effort to hide his feelings 
from her as they drove home that night, and he 
would certainly have avowed his love to her on 
that occasion if his clear thought and his self- 
control had not urged him to realise how unsuit- 
able a moment it was. 

It was only on two occasions that he appeared 
his old self again to Ruth : once when they spent a 
morning together at the Museum of Fine Arts, 
and again on an evening after they had all re- 
turned from a performance of Tristan and Isolde. 

On the former occasion they were alone, and 
Ruth had urged him while they were walking to 
the museum to tell her of his work and aspirations 
in his Connecticut factory. The eager sympathy 
with which she entered into his account and the 
encouraging pleasure which she evinced when he 
told her of his success in the factory and with the 
men, warmed him up to an enthusiasm in which 
he not only related his past experiences and his 
immediate plans, but even went far afield into the 
236 



WHAT MAY WE READ> 

distant and ultimate aims and ideals which he had 
set himself. 

It was then that Ruth on her part again felt a 
strong impulse of demonstrative affection for the 
man at her side, which threatened to make her 
lose her balance and to show him more than her 
self-esteem would permit. 

And then he illustrated to her in the museum 
his own views on decorative art. The chief point 
which he insisted upon was that our taste should 
be spontaneous without being narrow, original 
without being unmindful of the best work of the 
past or consciously and directly opposed to it. He 
complained that in the present day, and especially 
in America — though, owing to the centralisation 
of modern life in towns and in the great metrop- 
olises, it was to be found all over the world — the 
reign of fitful and tyrannical fashion, leading to 
exaggeration and insincerity, was supreme. That 
for the time being, even though they might be 
led to appreciate some form of art unknown to 
them before, people shut their eyes completely 
to the beauty in other forms. The monotonous 
and stereotyped decoration of the third quarter of 
the century, flimsy and counterfeit in material 
and workmanship, was succeeded by a great re- 
actionary wave in which the decorative feeling 
2Z7 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

seemed above all to oppose itself to stereotyped 
proportion and symmetry. And thus a movement, 
headed in architecture by Richardson, v^ith his 
preference for the Norman stunted arch, began, 
and led to the construction of buildings in which 
window lines and roof lines were meant immedi- 
ately to express the need for aggressive individu- 
alism — all manifesting a negative desire to avoid 
the regularity and symmetry which had become so 
wooden and lifeless in the previous generation. 
And while thus producing buildings that were in 
themselves original, the general effect was restless 
and often grotesque — at best picturesque in their 
rustic irregularity rather than architectural in 
civic order. The blocks of buildings and streets, 
taken as a whole, again presented so shapeless and 
restless a mass of buildings, that what was meant 
for harmonious variety turned into lawless license 
and discord. 

He proceeded to show how the same movement 
was strengthened in its effect upon decorative de- 
sign, by a complex tangle of very different influ- 
ences. Among these he noted the Gothic and 
Romanesque revivals into which had filtered a 
more foreign and barbarous element coming from 
the Far East in the familiarity with Japanese art 
in America, and, through the Exhibition of 1878, 
238 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

in France; and how all these positive currents 
came to strengthen the negative reaction against 
the stern regularity and symmetry of decoration 
in previous periods. 

This was noticeable in architectural friezes, 
mouldings and other carvings, in the ornaments 
of furniture, of wall paper and textiles, as well 
as in wood-cuts and decorative designs for books 
and their bindings. 

But this wave seemed again to have spent 
itself, and we had returned, with the same 
vigour and exaggeration, to the Italian and 
French Renaissance, which now held supreme 
sway as a fashion and was sheepishly accepted by 
the whole population. So Louis XVI followed 
Chippendale, and Empire threatened to expel 
Louis Seize. 

As they passed through the picture gallery and 
the fine collection of Greek casts, he showed her 
how, in the same way, the just appreciation of 
the beauty in earliest Italian painting and in the 
Archaic form of Greek sculpture had led people 
to put up as the highest standard what was, after 
all, but a preliminary stage in the development of 
these arts, leading to the highest perfection in the 
painting of a Titian and a Raphael and in the 
sculpture of a Phidias and a Praxiteles. 
239 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

If he appeared his famihar self on this day and 
while they were having their talk as of old, a new 
element was introduced into the tone he adopted 
on the second occasion, in which he was drawn 
into the serious discussion of a general topic, and 
this element had never appeared before with the 
same strength and clearness. 

Van Zant seemed to relinquish the tolerant, 
sympathetic or impersonal calmness and gen- 
tleness of his usual attitude in discussion, the 
light touch of bonhomie and undercurrent of 
humour in which he seemed to laugh at himself 
as well as at others — to regard his own views or 
preferences, as it were, from the outside — and he 
manifested personal passion, even querulousness, 
which made all his words sound more human, 
more youthful — so it appeared to her — more 
womanly. 

And, strange to say, this step down from the 
serene heights of intellectual justice and sym- 
pathy, even this manifestation of temper, pleased 
Ruth ; and so far from jarring upon her, it seemed 
to bring him nearer to her. 

He had accompanied Ruth, her father, and one 

of Ruth's woman friends to a performance of 

Tristan and Isolde which had thrilled them all. 

As they sat at home over supper in the afterglow 

240 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

of this mood, a discussion arose in which Mr. 
Ward modestly put forth his views on Wagner's 
music. He frankly admitted the limitations of 
his taste, in that he had for so long been bred, as 
regards music, upon the old masters, that he could 
not completely appreciate the music of Wagner. 
He acknowledged this to be a limitation in his 
own taste, admitting that those who so sincerely 
admired must be right, and that those who could 
not follow them were lacking in a sense of ap- 
preciation which the admirers possessed. 

The whole manner of the old gentleman was so 
simple and modest, that Van Zant was stung into 
acute irritation by the flippant and patronising 
manner in which Ruth's friend taunted Mr. Ward. 
Perhaps Van Zant was unconsciously jealous 
of the admiration which Ruth paid her friend, who 
appeared to his clear sight to be unworthy of such 
admiration. For she was one of those amateurs 
of art who make up for the superficiality of their 
knowledge by the intensity, exaggeration and ex- 
clusiveness of their praise of some one form of art 
which they seem to claim as specially their own. 
He at first took no part in the conversation, but 
sat in glum silence listening to her unbounded 
and indiscriminate praise of Wagner, her jeers 
at all other great musicians, and her arrogant 
241 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

treatment of the sound views enunciated by Mr. 
Ward. At last he broke out deliberately, the 
calm and blunt dogmatism, so foreign to his usual 
manner, imperfectly hiding his irritation: 

"I have been an admirer of Wagner since my 
early boyhood, when there were very few who 
shared my admiration. But though I recognise 
him as one of the great geniuses of modern times, 
I do not see why this should blind us into a slav- 
ish approval of everything he has done — which 
cannot be a genuine tribute to his genius. The 
degree and sincerity of our admiration is not 
measured necessarily by our unwillingness to lis- 
ten to any criticism. That there are frequent 
faults and flaws of taste in the construction of 
some of his dramas is beyond all doubt; that 
there are inordinate lengths which point to a want 
of moderation and artistic tact in Wagner's con- 
stitution; that there are even musical effects 
which are occasionally barocco, if not in bad taste, 
can be recognised, without ignoring the unsur- 
passed heights which his musical dramas and his 
music as such have attained. I do not fear to 
confess, for instance, that, both in the philosophy 
which pervades his several dramas, as well as in 
the sensuous dramatic elaboration of his ideas, 
with some striking exceptions, even in the music 
242 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

itself, Parsifal marks a downward step from the 
great composition we have heard this evening. 
That his heroification of innocence in the Pure 
Dolt, his symbohc, and therefore undramatic, il- 
lustration of Charity, of Purification through 
service and suffering — that all these are given in 
Parsifal in a doctrinaire and inartistic man- 
ner, without dramatic sensuousness of presenta- 
tion, and that this is not the case with the central 
idea in the Nibelungen Ring, and especially in his 
Lohengrin, Tannhduser, Meistersinger and 
Tristan." 

He paused for a moment and then turned again 
to the esoteric Wagnerian. "When I say this to 
a so-called Wagnerian, he is either prepared to 
knock me down, or to put me down as one who 
never appreciated the great Master, or as one who 
has become a traitor to the Cause. But why 
should we blind ourselves to manifest flaws, in 
order that we should retain our appreciation and 
admiration of great artists ? If I were to tell you 
that I have a great admiration for Schubert, I 
should be telling you the truth; and still, at the 
same time, I can say, that his lengths and repeti- 
tions and endless elaboration of his themes often 
bore me; that the affected shortness and abrupt 
surrendering of a good theme worthy of elabora- 
243 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

tion, as well as the ignoring of the important lyri- 
cal element in repetition, irritate me in Schumann, 
whom I love ; that with Beethoven, whom I wor- 
ship, the famous choral symphony, as far as the 
choral theme goes, does not appear to me at the 
height of his great productions, as little as does 
the Pastoral Symphony with the Dance of Peas- 
ants, and that 'Adelaide' as a song, with some 
beautiful passages, has some phrases that come 
near to false sentiment. In art, as in our relation 
to people, true loyalty and faithful affection only 
exist when, while recognising the faults, we can 
still ardently admire the virtues and love the 
whole personality." 

He had hardly delivered himself of this dia- 
tribe, when he regretted the warmth with which 
his words were spoken and the change of tone 
which his strictures had brought into the party. 

Only Ruth seemed pleased by what he said, 
while her friend, her father, and especially Van 
Zant himself, were made extremely uncomforta- 
ble; and then the young lady rose and said has- 
tily that "she really must go now or her people 
would be anxious." Mr. Ward at once insisted 
that he must see her home, adding, as he turned to 
Van Zant: 

"Please await my return. I shall not be gone 
244 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

long, and I should like to have the 'before-bed' 
cigar with you." 

When they had left, Van Zant sat in his deep 
easy chair, his elbow on the arm, his head resting 
in his hand, gazing moodily before him with an 
expression of misery and disgust. Ruth sat at 
the other end of the room, her face bright and 
clear and free from all preoccupation as she 
watched him. There was almost a spark 
of amusement as she looked at him. They 
sat in silence for some moments, and then 
Van Zant began in a tone of indignant self-re- 
proach : 

"I have been making a fool of myself — besides 
being a brute ; and I have counteracted the whole 
effect of Wagner's masterpiece and of your 
father's genial hospitality. I am not fit for de- 
cent company!" 

He looked steadily before him without raising 
his head. There was a strong contrast in the 
clear and almost cheerful ring of Ruth's voice as 
she said: 

"You have been doing nothing of the kind. I 
think our talk was a good ending to our delight- 
ful evening, and I agreed with every word you 
said. I am sure my father did, too." 

Instead of being appeased by these cheering 

245 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

words, Van Zant's self-reproach only became 
more passionate, as, looking up, he continued : 

"It was not only her views which irritated 
me." He arose from his chair and with his head 
bent forward, looking down frowning, he paced 
the room and burst forth: 

"It may seem unchivalrous to say this of a lady 
and ungenerous to say it the moment she has left 
the room ; but I cannot abide her ! She is one of 
those superficial, affected people who caricature 
all I care for most and make me hate the things I 
admire and love and — want others to admire and 
love, and she forces me to take the other side 
which I do not like, and say things I do not mean 
— to make a fool of myself all round." 

He stopped short, and must have felt that his 
pacing the room in this way was too familiar, too 
much at home, and his growing irritation was get- 
ting the better of him. He let himself down 
heavily in the chair again and resumed his former 
position. 

"You are certainly too hard on her, if not on 
yourself," Ruth answered gently from her chair. 
"She does make mistakes and exaggerates — as we 
all do — but she is trying for the right thing and 
that is worth something." 

Instead of appeasing him, Ruth's gentleness 
246 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

only seemed to exasperate him the more. He 
spoke hastily, with growing irritation, and, 
by a curious turn, his resentment seemed now to 
include her, nay, to be mainly directed at her: 

"Of course you must defend her ! She is your 
friend. That's what disgusts me most : that you, 
who are her superior in every way, should be in- 
fluenced by such a person; that you, who are so 
far above them, should be at all swayed by them. 
You may for the moment agree with what I say, 
but it does not affect you — they have their hold 
on you!" 

There was not only resentment, there was pain 
m his voice as he uttered these words. 

Ruth had silently risen from her chair and now 
stood beside him ; she gently touched his shoulder 
with her hand as she gazed down upon him. He 
still sat motionless and looked down, but the touch 
of her hand had sent a thrill through his whole 
body. 

"How can you say that, dear friend !" she said 
with gentle reproach and her voice grew richer 
and more touching as she proceeded : "What in- 
fluence have they all over me compared with what 
you have had and have ! Need I, must I, tell you 
that it is yoii who have made me see my whole life 
and all it means in a different light from what 
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WHAT MAY WE READ? 

I did before I met you? That it was your 
influence which caused me to give up my return 
to Europe and to devote myself to a new life here 
m my own home, and that I am happier 
and, I believe, more useful than I ever hoped 
to be? Need I tell you this, and that you 
have entered into all my thoughts — and that 
I feel, and shall always feel, the deepest grati- 
tude to you?" There was a thrill of sincere 
emotion in her voice as she uttered these last 
words. 

Van Zant rose abruptly and stood before her 
looking into her eyes, his face was flushed and 
he spoke rapidly in great excitement : 

"Gratitude! That's it. But I do not want you 
to feel gratitude toward me. I am to you the 
mere impersonator of ideas, of truths, of plati- 
tudes, of moral maxims, an embodiment of gen- 
eral principles — without flesh and blood — and 
your feelings remain unmoved. I am a prig or a 
hypocrite — I don't know which ! I am not good, 
I am bad — do you hear 1 All I cared for in say- 
ing all these fine things was you, you the woman, 
you the sweet girl ; and I feel to you as a man feels 
to a woman, a boy to a girl, like the young fellow 
you danced with so much the other night — nay, 
though I am older, and am a prig, I feel more 
248 



WHAT MAY WE READ? 

deeply than that young fellow, Ruth, because I 

love you, Ruth, with all my heart, with 

What he saw in her eyes and in her face, what 
he said and what happened, it is not for us to say. 
What Mr. Ward found when he returned, what 
they said to him and he to them, we need not re- 
peat. But we know that they were all supremely 
happy. 



249 



NOV 17 1911 



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